


Adaptation

by JimIntoMystery



Series: Futility [2]
Category: Star Trek
Genre: Delta Quadrant, Gen, The Borg, Unimatrix Zero, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 29,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2445710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JimIntoMystery/pseuds/JimIntoMystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2386, the Borg Collective is at war with a massive fleet, commanded by Admiral Kathryn Janeway.  But the hive faces another threat from within its territory: a pernicious Borg insurgency known as Unimatrix Zero.  Years ago the "Zeroes" escaped Borg control, and ever since they have fought a hopeless battle against their former oppressors.</p>
<p>Lt. Commander Kreighen has been chosen as the Starfleet liaison to Unimatrix Zero, and he knows why.  He's defied Admiral Janeway's authority, but a court martial would reveal her own questionable handling of the war.  His mission is essentially to be exiled behind enemy lines, never to return.  Kreighen might be able to come to grips with this fate, if not for the fact he must share it with his crew, whose only crime was to trust his leadership...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It had no name. Its designation was Eight of Twenty, Secondary Operations Unit of Cube 61, Spatial Grid 1192 in the Borg Collective.

Three weeks earlier it had been Five of Seven, Auxilliary Medical Detachment of the same cube, until its reassignment had become necessary. Cube 61 had been networked into the Collective's hive mind at the time a powerful jamming signal had been broadcast directly into the thoughts of every Borg drone across half the quadrant. The vessel had been far enough from the "epicenter" to have time to recognize the threat and react before its entire crew was overwhelmed, but many of its drones had either shut down or sustained massive cybernetic damage. In the aftermath, Cube 61 needed drones manning the ship's sensors far more than medical services.

Eight of Twenty did not complain about its change in career. It could not. Bionic implants and nanotechnology throughout its body denied it the capacity for independent thought, forcing it to comply with the will of the Borg Collective. It was this interdependence, vital as it was to the Borg, that had made the jamming attack so catastrophic for Cube 61, which was now unable to reestablish its link to the rest of the hive mind. Without this link, it would be far easier for these Borg to abandon the priorities of the Collective, and far more difficult for them to develop instantaneous strategies to defeat any threats in their path.

It was one such threat that now held Eight of Twenty's attention. Its thoughts broadcast throughout the ship to its fellow drones, and in so doing became the thoughts of them all. "A VESSEL IS APPROACHING. GRID ONE ONE SEVEN. OBTAIN IDENTIFICATION. ALTER COURSE TO INTERCEPT."

Cube 61 instantly turned in space, following its new intercept course. Drones previously working on repairing hive mind communications shifted their focus to powering weapons and defenses. The option of avoiding this encounter--of determining that Cube 61 was far from its peak and needed assistance more than conquest--was not considered. The directives hardwired into their programming were clear: the Borg were the embodiment of perfection, and could not be defeated; therefore the highest priority was to seek out other civilizations, to add such biological and technological distinctiveness to their own.

"IDENTIFICATION COMPLETE." the hive mind proclaimed. "UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS, STARFLEET SHUTTLECRAFT, DELTA FLYER-CLASS. LIFE FORMS ABOARD: SPECIES FIVE SIX ONE EIGHT; SPECIES TWO ZERO ZERO ZERO; SPECIES THREE TWO NINE ONE. PREPARE FOR ASSIMILATION."

These were the only facts of relevance to Cube 61. Eight of Twenty was not concerned that this shuttlecraft had arrived in the Delta Quadrant as part of a massive Federation-Klingon-Romulan armada determined to exterminate Borg; that this invasion had been virtually one-sided for nearly two years, as the Alliance weaponry had rendered Borg defenses all but trivial; or that this particular shuttle was responsible for the jamming signal that left Cube 61 struggling to function. Strength was irrelevant. Retribution was irrelevant. Resistance was futile. All would be assimilated. 

Eight of Twenty passionlessly opened a hailing frequency to the shuttle. Borg protocols allowed for the option of seeking unconditional surrender, to save resources in the event that candidates for assimilation were readily compliant. Given the cube's status, it's collective readily accepted this course of action. 

"WE ARE THE BORG," sounded the transmission. "YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED."

On behalf of the Borg, Eight of Twenty looked into a monitor displaying the open transmission. The pilot of the shuttle looked directly into the viewscreen, presenting an irrelevant display of will. "This is Lieutenant Commander Jacob Kreighen of the _Hrunting_. You will lower your defense screens and escort my crew to your computer core."

"DEMANDS ARE IRREL--"

"What's relevant is that you cannot defeat this ship," the pilot interrupted. "You ignore this fact because the Collective forces you to. It doesn't care if you live or die, but you should. I know you're out of direct contact with the hive mind or I wouldn't make this offer. Consider my terms, or die."

"RESISTANCE IS--"

Single-mindedly, the Borg had intended to complete the statement before locking onto the shuttle with a tractor beam. The shuttlecraft, however, was unexpectedly capable of capitalizing on the delay, and fired a dissipator spread into the cube's hull, rattling the vessel and leeching away its power supplies. Eight of Twenty staggered from the blast, but slowly recovered and manipulated the console to activate the tractor beam. 

As the shuttle engaged its evasive manuevers, Cube 61 dedicated its collective consciousness to determining its priorities. Diplomatic solutions were, as ever, dismissed instantly. The battle damage was deemed extensive, but tolerable; a cube of this configuration could continue to function with only 29.2402% of its systems. Falling back to regroup and repair was unacceptable, given the shuttle's firepower. The Collective had an awareness and great interest in the technology the Alliance was using to conduct its invasion, but intelligence on this technology was limited--every Borg ship that had engaged the fleet had been destroyed thus far. Cube 61 therefore decided that the most important objective, at the expense of all others, would be the assimilation of this vessel.

Eight of Twenty monitored its viewscreen as the shuttle darted around the cube, pelting the Borg hull with quantum torpedoes. Tractor beams lanced out through space as the drones tried in vain to seize the tiny ship in one swift, brutal stroke. After several minutes it was clear that the current approach was unworkable; Cube 61 resolved to adapt. 

At once, Borg began reconfiguring power distribution nodes and relay stations, and within moments a single face of the cube boasted two new tractor emitters to work in concert with the existing, insufficient beam. Once the shuttle came into its range, the tractor array flashed to life, each green ray panning through the void, seeking to triangulate onto its prey. The shuttle avoided these tractor beams for a few moments, but inevitably one slowed its momentum long enough for another to take hold, until all three beams held fast.

"ALIEN VESSEL HAS BEEN SECURED. DEFLECTOR SHIELDS AT EIGHTY-SIX PERCENT, APPROACHING ZERO." If there was to be any victory celebration aboard Cube 61, it would be no more than this cold statement issued through the ship's hive mind. "REASSIGNING DRONES TO BOARDING PARTY. ASSIMILATION IS IMMINENT."


	2. Chapter 2

The Borg cube was hobbled, with its link to the greater hive mind greatly diminished, and yet it had proven to be more than a match for the _Hrunting_. The seemingness of this was vital to the plan.

Borg vessels had no bow or stern; there was no blindsiding a cube because drones were stationed in every part of it, monitoring every direction with equal priority. There would be no way to prevent them from noticing when the transwarp conduit opened. At best they could be slightly distracted by matters more relevant to their concerns. So when General Korok's ship emerged from the conduit, he found exactly what he needed to see: his target preoccupied with a Federation shuttlecraft.

The Klingon blood within him urged him to stalk his prey and prolong the hunt. But the Borg nanoprobes within that same blood were a stinging reminder of the nature of his enemy. They would easily recognize his captured sphere did not bear their subspace flags, and defend themselves. He couldn't give them that chance. "Execute!" he growled.

Borg torpedoes erupted from the sphere and cratered the hull of the cube. The tractor array gripping the _Hrunting_ shimmered in time with the explosions, but held fast. Cube 61 would not relinquish its prize easily, and yet it did not return fire. The enemy cube turned to retreat, determining that the value of the captured shuttle was too high to risk engaging the sphere.

Korok smiled slightly at the success of his opening salvo. "Report," he boomed.

His tactical officer, a Hirogen hunter also liberated from the Collective, shared his urgency. "Reading energy fluctuations throughout the cube," he reported. "Power is being redistributed to propulsion and the tractor beams."

"What of the electromagnetic field?" Korok demanded.

"Inactive."

"Activate beam!" the Klingon ordered. The power nodes of his own ship began to flicker as it energized its transporter beams, which penetrated deep into Cube 61 and locked upon the only centralized section of the vessel: Its computer core. This completely altered the cube's priorities, and in microseconds its withdrawal was halted to secure its most critical component. 

"EM field has been re-enabled," the Hirogen confirmed. "Transport was unsuccessful."

Another of Korok's bridge officers spoke up. "General, I'm picking up new power surges on the cube."

Korok stifled a smile, deferring his celebration. "Cause?"

"It's consistent with an overload. I think we've damaged the vinculum."

"Excellent," Korok grinned. Stealing the core had never been his goal. By locking multiple transporter beams onto different sections of the system, he simply sought to take it apart. Cube 61 was welcome to its vinculum--in pieces. He had other concerns. "Have they released the tractor beam?"

"Negative...they may not have time..."

The general's smile evaporated. "Move us into transporter range of the _Hrunting_ \--!"

Before he could complete finish his sentence, Korok watched on the main viewscreen as Cube 61 erupted into a series of catastrophic explosions. For a split second his heart sank...until the _Hrunting_ effortlessly broke the tractor array to cruise out to a safer distance.

Korok amended his previous orders. "Hail them," he said, and an instant later he was addressing Jake Kreighen in the _Hrunting_ cockpit. "Victory is ours, Commander."

Kreighen nodded. "I'd have preferred to recruit them to Unimatrix Zero, but there was no reasoning with them."

"The chance of that was always slim," Korok noted. "It's taken years to liberate the forces we have now. Those that can't be rescued are better off dead. I am simply satisfied that I haven't lost my bait."

"Credit goes to my crew, General. Jimenez had been developing new shield modulations to disrupt the Borg tractor beam before we left. Ijhel and Tirava helped him get it off the drawing board."

"You have a fine team, Kreighen. Rest them well. There will be a mission briefing in seven hours. Now that this sector is cleared of Collective activity, we can more freely plan our next move."

"Acknowledged. Requesting permission to dock in Assimilation Bay Six."

"Granted. You and your crew do honor to your Starfleet, Commander. I will personally make sure Admiral Janeway knows of this."

Kreighen searched for the right response. "I'm...sure she'll be glad to hear that, Korok. _Hrunting_ out."


	3. Chapter 3

The _Hrunting_ was a _Delta Flyer_ -class shuttle, based on a prototype constructed by the famed crew of the starship _Voyager_. The prototype had been shaped by the particular challenges of exploring the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy. Willingly entering the assimilation bay of a Borg vessel had not been in the specs, but Commander Kreighen found a way to manage.

The Fliers were designed to be better suited for long-term missions than standard Federation shuttlecraft, but that didn't dampen the relief a typical away team would experience upon returning to a mothership after a long mission. Then again, Korok's sphere was no typical mothership. Although the Klingon general and his crew were free from the Borg Collective, they had not yet had the luxury of removing their cybernetic implants and refitting the ship to service fully organic individuals. Kreighen and his crew were the only non-Borg on board; the _Hrunting_ itself was the only non-Borg living quarters in the sector.

As he brought the shuttle to a full stop into the docking clamps, Kreighen addressed the food replicator. "Computer, Skagaran whiskey, one bottle." He then swiveled the pilot's seat to face his crew. "Drinks are on me, people."

No one wanted to speak to him first, but Doctor Ijhel refused to prolong the deadlock. "Kanar," she shrugged.

Kreighen nodded and removed his whiskey from the replicator. "Ensign?"

Nathan Jimenez seemed flummoxed by the invitation. "I don't...just--just make it coffee. In a flask. I've got some work to do in the sphere."

"I can't have you up all night," Kreighen chided. "Korok's briefing is at oh-four-hundred."

"I'll work it out," the ensign muttered. "Sir."

Kreighen wanted to argue the point, but he thought better of it. "What about you, Tirava?"

The Andorian looked up from her tactical console, and stared at him coldly, as if offended that he would even speak to her. He took the hint. He didn't want to fight them--not now. Not again. 

Before he could get off track, he replicated the others' drinks, passed them out, and launched into his speech. "I just, uh, wanted to say that I meant what I told Korok. You did good work out there against the cube. I know this is a difficult assignment, and..."--he searched for the right words--"...and none of you would have accepted it by choice. But you've risen to the challenge. And I wanted you to know that."

Ijhel and Jimenez stared at him in silence, holding their drinks. Tirava kept her eyes on her station.

Awkwardly, Kreighen changed topics. "But...we still have some room for improvement. Once we got the new shield modulations programmed into the tactical systems, it shouldn't have taken so long to break the tractor beam. Tirava, what happened?"

She kept her head down, tapping at the console. "There are too many modulations, is what happened."

"If there weren't," Jimenez retorted, "The Borg would be able to keep up with them and adapt."

"I _know_ that," she fumed, "But _our_ computer can barely keep up."

"Impossible," Ijhel broke in. Her foremost fields were computer programming and pedantry, so she couldn't let the matter lie. "I know Starfleet compilers, Lieutenant. This is well within their capacity. As long as you use triaxilation--"

"I'm not talking about subspace transmissions," Tirava huffed. "If I triaxilated our shield frequency the emitters would overheat and we'd be burning out our own defenses!"

Jimenez was stunned by the suggestion. "What do you think the Ganino baffles in the emitter array are there for?"

"Ganino...?"

"Ganino baffles," Kreighen sighed. "They weren't standard issue in Starfleet vessels...until 2363." 

The conversation was brought to a halt--there was no need to add that Tirava had been assimilated by the Borg in 236 _2_. For several moments the crew of the _Hrunting_ searched for new ways to ignore one another. Eventually Ensign Jimenez packed up his coffee flask and a toolkit and silently exited the shuttle.

"Fine," Tirava finally responded. "Ijhel can man tactical. I'll just serve drinks after each mission."

" _You're_ the tactical officer, Lieutenant," Kreighen insisted. "Nobody blames you for being out of the loop for twenty-five years. But frankly, you're going to have to catch up fast."

"Acknowledged," she growled. "Computer, activate Ajax."

A hologram of a tall Starfleet soldier materialized in the middle of the room. "Sergeant Ajax reporting for duty," it announced. Finding Kreighen in the pilot's seat, it stood at attention. "Awaiting your orders, Commander."

Tirava took the hologram aside. "Ajax, I need a full briefing on all Starfleet tactical enhancements since stardate 39133." she explained. "Let's start with weapons--it'd be good to know what quantum torpedoes _are_ if I'm going to be hurling them out into space."

"For god's sake, Tirava," Kreighen groaned, "I didn't mean _right now_!"

Ajax turned back. "Is there a problem, sir?"

"There certainly is," Ijhel huffed. "This may be the first chance in days for me to run a level-five diagnostic on your holomatrix. Lieutenant Tirava will have to find another tutor."

Tirava was about to blow up at the Cardassian, until Ajax replied. "Much as I enjoy your charming bedside manner, Doctor, that's not your decision to make."

"Is that so?" Ijhel was not used to having her programs defy her. 

"I'm a Starfleet military hologram, programmed to follow Starfleet protocols," he explained. "This is a Starfleet vessel. The chain of command in this crew is: Commander Kreighen, Lieutenant Tirava, Ensign Jimenez, myself, and whatever instances of my matrix are created to serve under me."

Ijhel rolled her eyes. "And where exactly would your protocols put me on that list?"

"You're a civilian. I outrank you."

Kreighen fought back a chuckle, and he caught Tirava doing the same. Ijhel, on the other hand, was now livid. "We'll just see about that," she threatened, "when your destructors fail and you overload the call stack in your mobile emitter!" With that she stormed off, kanar in hand.

Ajax glanced back to Kreighen, perplexed. "I _was_ going to say that I'd submit to her diagnostic if you ordered me to, Commander."

Kreighen stood up from his chair and approached the hologram. "I wouldn't worry about it. Go ahead and help Tirava." He paused and looked to the Andorian. "Although I happen have some experience with quantum torpedoes if that would--"

"No, that would not," she insisted. Whatever thaw he thought he had seen in her attitude towards him was gone.

Kreighen backed off. "You're on your own, Sergeant. Do me a favor...make sure she doesn't stay up all night."

"Understood," Ajax replied. "And where will you be?"

"Me? I'll be looking for wherever it is the Borg go when they have to sleep on the couch."


	4. Chapter 4

> Personal Log, Lieutenant Commander Jacob Kreighen, stardate 63068.5.
> 
> I've got four hours until Korok's briefing. I really ought to find a place to sleep before then. But I need to talk about this...
> 
> I should start at the beginning, in case anyone ever reviews this. For the past three weeks I've been in command of a team assigned to work with Unimatrix Zero, a resistance movement of former Borg drones operating in the heart of the Collective's territory. Right now I'm aboard the _Exsecuturus_ \--that's the name General Korok gave this ship after he escaped the hive mind and commandeered it. Officially my mission is to assist the Zeroes with their insurgency until they can formally link up with the Alliance forces. Unofficially...this is Admiral Janeway's idea of death sentence.
> 
> When the war started, I didn't think twice about it. The Borg were a clear and present danger, and all of a sudden we had the technology to send an invasion fleet to the other side of the galaxy. Cutting ourselves off from the Alpha Quadrant made sense--what if the Borg infiltrated our supply lines, or piggybacked on our hyper-subspace transmissions? It wasn't until the war took a turn for the worse that I realized we'd built a wall to put our backs up against. I had to know whether the blockade was to protect the Alpha Quadrant from the Borg, or to protect Janeway's personal war from anyone who might order a retreat.
> 
> So I came up with a plan to steal a shuttle and get myself court-martialed. That way they'd have to re-establish contact with home, if only to send me to a prison. And if they didn't, that would at least get people asking the right questions. I didn't count on Janeway figuring out how to maintain her blockade and keep me out of the way at the same time. Instead of exiling me to the Alpha Quadrant, she exiled me behind enemy lines.
> 
> I could almost stomach it if she didn't force the others to come along. I guess they would have been loose ends if she hadn't. For the record, I never meant for them to get caught up in my little plot. They didn't ask to go with me on the _Hrunting_...
> 
> Well, Tirava did, I suppose...
> 
> They've barely spoken to me since then. They follow my commands because they're professionals, but it's no secret how they feel about me personally. All I can do to make it up to them is try and keep them alive...try to get them out of this mess. Should be easy enough--I just have to end the war. Right now it looks like that means I need to win it.

Krieghen had only just finished recording his thoughts when the regeneration alcove he'd been sitting against hummed to life. The former drone that had stood silent within the compartment was jolted into consciousness, refreshed for his next duty shift. It's cybernetic enhancements were extensive; Kreighen could scarcely identify its gender, let alone its species. The cyborg briefly made eye contact, as if to stare at him curiously, before wordlessly stalking off to its business.

"The people aboard this sphere are loyal to the resistance." The voice echoed from the other end of the corridor. Kreighen turned to find Korok greeting him. "But many know only the manners taught to them by the Borg."

"I suppose it's silly to expect them all to be humans, Klingons, and Romulans," Kreighen observed.

The Klingon warrior nodded. "Most drones in the Collective are of species indiginous to the Delta Quadrant, often from races that were totally assimilated over a century ago. For a time I pitied myself like a petty Mizarian over what had been done to me. But many of my crew never even had a culture to be taken away from them. The Borg must pay a heavy price for this."

"I assume tomorrow's briefing figures into that..."

"Which is why I told you and your crew to get some rest," Korok grunted, "not wander through the ship."

The commander hung his head. "I...decided my crew needed a rest from me."

Korok laughed--a guttural, Klingon bellow, tinged with white noise from his sublaryngeal modultors. "Your Starfleet notions of authority always amuse me, Kreighen. On a Klingon ship, when the crew needs a...'rest' from its commander, someone ends up dead."

"I'd say that's all the more reason to relieve some of the pressure, before it boils over."

The rejoinder amused Korok further, but he changed his tone. "This is your first command, isn't it?"

"I led a few away teams on the _Bonham_ ," Kreighen answered, thinking of his former ship, "but nothing like this."

"It shows." The general crouched down (against the wishes of his spinal clamps) to meet his comrade eye-to-eye. "When I took command of my first Bird-of-Prey, I wanted everything to be perfect. I expected to be in pure harmony with my crew, like the warriors of the ancient sagas."

"I'm guessing that didn't happen."

"At first I blamed them. When I could find no fault in their performance, I questioned my leadership, much as you are doing. In time I understood the ancient sagas omit certain...inconvenient...details. The harsh truth is that a leader cannot put friendship above all else; the moment he does, he is no longer a leader."

"And a Klingon leader learns that lesson quickly," Krieghen concluded. "Or at the end of a knife."

"Indeed," Korok smiled. "But in your case, I doubt your crew will give you the easy way out."


	5. Chapter 5

"Good morning, Two."

Two of Six looked up from her regeneration alcove to find Nathan Jimenez greeting her. "Clarify," she said flatly.

Jimenez shrugged. "Uh...good...morning?"

"'Morning' is a temporal reference, defined by the relative position of a star to a fixed point on an orbiting body. Within the context of a spacefaring vessel the term is meaningless."

"I...well...you're just waking up....and it's a human expression..." Jimenez mulled it over himself and finally threw his hands up. "You know what, I don't understand why I said it either. Are you ready to help me with the comm system?"

"That is my currently assigned function," Two acknowledged. "I will comply." She stepped out of the alcove and walked with the ensign toward the nearest sub-plexus. "Perhaps you said it because you are small."

Jimenez blinked at her. "I'm sorry?"

"You said you did not understand why you said 'Good morning' to me," she reminded him. "Since Unimatrix Zero liberated me from the Collective, I have observed that my own thoughts and actions have at times been random or poorly considered. It would seem that individuals are too small to perfectly regulate their cognitive processes."

"I guess that's true, but I've always gotten by." When they reached the sub-plexus Jimenez knelt down to scan it with his tricorder. "I don't think this thing is connected to the lower decks. You want to give it a try?"

Two raised her hand towards a nearby console and fired two metallic tubules into it. She stood there, motionless, interfacing with the entire communications system, until her diagnostic was complete. "Sections 121 through 134 are not responding. I have isolated seventy-three distinct sources of interference that will have to be eliminated before we can achieve full connection."

"Hold on a minute," Jimenez said. "How many of these things are on this ship? A thousand?"

"One thousand, seven hundred thirteen."

"Then we hardly need to keep them all at 100%," he continued. "If each of them can connect to even half of the others, they'll all be in at least indirect contact, with more than enough redundancies."

Two was perplexed by this suggestion. "It would be inefficient to operate any of this sphere's systems at least than optimal capacity."

"I'm sure the Collective would feel that way, but they'd have ten thousand drones aboard a sphere like this, with nothing to do but keep everything in perfect condition. We've got, what, two thousand? And how many of them can do engineering work when they're not linked to the hive mind?"

"Your point is relevant." Two returned her attention to the tubules connecting her fingers to the console. "By interfacing with other sub-plexuses in succession, I am able to circumvent fifty-four of the impediments. Sections 128 through 130 remain inaccessible from this station."

Jimenez nodded. "That's a little more like it. Now let's see if I can boost the signal enough to cut through the interference..."

As he set up the power converter from his toolkit, Two withdrew herself from the console. She watched him work for several minutes, before finally deciding to speak her mind. "Ensign. May I ask you a personal question?"

"Uh...yeah. Yeah, sure. What is it?"

"In broad terms, the former drones aboard the _Exsecuturus_ may be subdivided into two groups: Those that remember their lives before they were assimilated, and those that have no memory of any society beyond the Collective. My experience suggests that these two groups have difficulty interacting beyond a professional level."

"That's probably understandable," Jimenez offered. "From what I read about the ex-drones who served on _Voyager_ , it took a while for the crew to adjust to having them around."

"I have noticed you do not have as much difficulty with this adjustment. Explain."

Jimenez considered the matter and put down his tools. "Well, to be honest, I guess I find you easier to get along with."

"This is not typical within your peer group."

"No," he agreed, "it probably isn't. I'm sure Kreighen would think you're cold, impolite, and a little stuffy. Most humans would--they'd tell you to loosen up. But I don't care about any of that. You're all about getting the work done, and that's just what I like."

"You like work?"

"I like..." He chose his words carefully. "...I like order. I like for things to make sense. That's why I became an engineer--you clock in, you fix things for eight hours, you clock out. Do you know how I got assigned to this sphere, Two?"

"No."

He frowned at the thought of it. "Let's just say none of it made any sense. Kreighen and the others on the _Hrunting_ are only good for making things complicated. But you--you're different. I'd stay down here all the time if I could."

"I see," Two remarked. "Are we...friends, Ensign?"

"I guess we are," he smiled. 

Two of Six attempted to imitate his expression. In eight years she had yet to truly master it.


	6. Chapter 6

They'd given Ijhel a Starfleet uniform to wear for this assignment. The fabric rankled her; then again, so did the assignment. So did Starfleet. 

She was too angry to find a place to sleep--too angry to even drink from the bottle she carried with her. And so she'd been roaming the _Exsecuturus_ for over an hour, simmering her own bad mood, until someone finally dared to confront her. "I desperately hope that is kanar," she heard over her shoulder. 

Few species appreciated the beverage, and only one preferred it. Ijhel turned and jumped back at the sight of a fellow Cardassian. His face was riddled with technology, but even the Borg could not fully erase the distinctive features of her race.

He lit up when he saw her from the front. "Then you _are_ the Cardassian woman from the shuttle," he concluded. "Kerim Ledret."

"Utana Ijhel," she responded. "And yes, it is kanar. However, I was under the impression that the Zeroes remain unable to eat or drink..."

"It was decided that we would retain as much of our Borg enhancements as possible, to allow for every advantage in our struggle," Ledret explained. "A decision I now thoroughly regret. Nevertheless, it pleases me merely to see a little bottle of home."

"'Merely' the bottle," Ijhel scoffed. "Or were you stalking me for something else?"

He rolled his eyes--or at least the one not encased within an eyepiece. "Come now, madam. You've been aboard this sphere for nearly three weeks, and in all that time our paths have failed to cross. Clearly I had to find some other way to meet you than the direct approach." Ledret glanced at her uniform. "Perhaps you were too ashamed of your own...assimilation."

"I am _not_ in Starfleet," she insisted. "They didn't want it to look like they were sending a civilian into harm's way."

"Still," Ledret continued, "a Cardassian military uniform would have served the same purpose."

"There is no Cardassian military presence in the Delta Quadrant."

"Then why are you here?" he pressed. "I accept that after all these years, humans, Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians have made peace to work together against a common enemy. The Borg...bring people together like that.  But if the cause is worthy of sending civilian scientists, why not a fleet of _Galor_ -class destroyers?"

Ijhel lowered her eyes, as though she were about to tell him of a death in his family. "You're not going to like the answer."

For the next three hours they discussed history. It had been 2370 when Ledret had last seen the Alpha Quadrant, as a glinn aboard a patrol ship along the Federation-Cardassian border. A spatial anomaly in a plasma storm had whisked his vessel off across the galaxy--he was assimilated by the Borg shortly thereafter. The Cardassia he had left behind was one of the primary superpowers of the quadrant, bristling against the Federation border, always prepared to reignite a war the Federation could not win.

That changed when the Federation made first contact with the Dominion--an ancient, belligerent empire from the Gamma Quadrant determined to attack any government that they deemed a threat. Tensions in the Alpha Quadrant rose. A joint Romulan-Cardassian pre-emptive strike on the Dominion failed miserably. The Klingon Empire grew increasingly paranoid, and launched a bloody war against the Cardassians out of fear their leadership had been infiltrated by Dominion agents. By 2373 Cardassian influence was at its lowest ebb; to reestablish itself, it applied for membership within the Dominion.

With a territorial claim to Cardassian space, the Dominion had the perfect foothold in entire Alpha Quadrant, and war was inevitable. The conflict brought the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Empire together for the first time, while the Cardassians slowly discovered they had become second-class citizens in their own state. After several years the tide began to turn, and the Federation Alliance closed in on Cardassia Prime. During the final battle, the Cardassians rose up against their masters; in retaliation the Dominion began bombing Cardassia Prime even as they defended it from Allied invaders. Ultimately the Dominion surrendered in 2375 and returned safely to the Gamma Quadrant; the Cardassians were left to pick up the pieces of an empire destroyed from within and without. 

"The damage was vast," Ijhel recalled. "The military was in shambles. The Federation couldn't afford to have a failed state on its border, or risk Dominion sympathies triggering a new war, so they began relief efforts immediately. Even today most of our food and medical supplies are shipped in from Bajor..."

"Bajor," Ledret muttered, stone-faced. "Diplomatic relations with them was one thing. Accepting charity from them..."

"I know. We wouldn't even be able to defend our borders without Federation assistance. It's all rather humiliating."

"And that's why the Detapa Council sent you out here," he reasoned. "They feel a sense of obligation for the Federation's aid, and this is all Cardassia has to offer."

"Quite the contrary," Ijhel insisted. "The entire Alpha Quadrant has a stake in the war with the Borg. Starfleet, the Klingons, and the Romulans are doing all the fighting. But they have materiel support from the Ferengi and the Gorn; researchers provided by the Legarans, the Caldonians, the Xindi..." 

"Then we're little more than vassals," Ledret amended, "doing whatever we can to help our Federation lords protect us from our enemies. I'm not certain which fate is worse."

Ijhel's mouth opened, seeking to challenge him on the point, until she could find no argument. Instead she looked to her bottle, and drank deeply for the both of them.


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn't that she'd been out of the loop. When she'd been linked into the Borg Collective, Tirava knew everything that they knew. More precisely, she had access to the knowledge of every drone throughout the galaxy, if and when that information was required for her designated functions. Many of Starfleet's most critical innovations in the past twenty years were fully known to the Borg from their encounters with the _Enterprise_ , _Voyager_ , and a dozen other starships that had the Federation hadn't heard about.

However, disconnection from the hive mind left an drone's brain overwhelmed with more raw data than a single individual could process. Rescued drones always remembered _being_ a drone, but much of what they were privy to _as_ a drone quickly slipped away, as if waking from a dream. Federation scientists theorized that this was a safeguard, intended to prevent the capture of a single drone from revealing their deepest secrets. Tirava saw it merely as a final insult from her captors, to usurp twenty years of her life and leave her nothing to show for it.

Ajax had covered a lot of ground with her overnight, but finally he would go no further in spite of her. "You really should get some sleep, Lieutenant," he said for the fifth time.

"The briefing is at oh-four hundred, Ajax," Tirava reminded him. "It's oh-three thirteen. What's the point?"

"Commander Kreighen ordered me to make sure you got some rest," the hologram countered.

"It wasn't an _order_!" She rubbed her temple as she tried to find a way to explain it. "If I told you take a walk out the nearest airlock, would you take that as an order too?"

Ajax was puzzled by the question. "If you weren't ordering me to do it, why would you tell me to at all?"

"Because people just--they just say things. If I asked Nathan to get me coffee he wouldn't _have_ to do it. It's just normal social interaction."

"You're missing my point," he insisted. "If you and Ensign Jimenez were not Starfleet officers, you might still conceivably be in a social setting where you might ask him to get you coffee. But you wouldn't activate a holographic waiter and ask it for coffee without some sense of obligation attached to the request. Otherwise, why would you turn him on at all?"

"But you're not a holographic waiter," Tirava observed.

"No, I'm holographic soldier, programmed to take orders from my superiors. Presumably if the crew had no orders to give me, I wouldn't even be running."

"But it's..." Her antennae relaxed as she recognized his logic. "It's very easy for us to forget you're a hologram," she explained. "Occasionally you're going to find yourself in interactions outside the scope of the chain of command. To tell the truth, you're thinking like a raw cadet. In my first year at the Academy I'd snap to attention if I even _smelled_ brass. With experience you learn when it is and isn't time for protocol."

"Is that why you're insubordinate to Commander Kreighen?" He asked innocently.

It was an awkward topic, but she didn't duck it. "Actually, that's as good an example as any. All of us--even Ijhel, and she's not even Starfleet--understand that during a mission it's vital to respect the chain of command. But when we're off-duty, I'm not under orders to like Kreighen. He knows that, and that's why he doesn't push me or put me on report--it wouldn't change anything."

"But you love him."

Tirava's antennae shot straight up. " _What_ did you say?"

Ajax was programmed to rush headlong into armies of Borg drones. Nevertheless he backed off from the Andorian woman. "Forgive me, I didn't mean to be forward. But Doctor Ijhel and Ensign Jimenez seem to believe you were romantically linked in the past, and...I can detect increased blood flow to your capillaries when you discuss him."

She shook her head. "I'm so pleased Ijhel is building her holographic soldiers out of holographic doctors. Fine.  I do--" she stopped short of saying it, as though she couldn't. "Your...observations are correct."

"Then why do you treat him with such animosity?"

"Because--!" Again Tirava was unsure how to order her thoughts. "Kreighen wants to steal a shuttle and get himself put before an official inquiry. Fine. He doesn't want me to get involved but I insist on coming with him. Fine. 

"Now he has to find a way to get court-martialed where I won't try to stop him, so he argues that we have to go off on our own to capture a Borg cube. But he's stuck--he has to make sure he gets himself in just enough trouble, but not _so much_ that the rest of us are implicated. So he tries to make it look like he tricked us--he told us it was all about saving the Alliance, when it was really just to rescue the great love of his life from the cube."

"The prisoners we discovered aboard the cube had never met him," Ajax recalled. "Eventually Commander Kreighen acknowledged that deception."

"Because Admiral Janeway caught what he was trying to do!" she snapped. "If not for that he would have happily gone on letting everyone believe that he betrayed and humiliated me, which in itself is a betrayal and a humiliation. He _dishonored_ me, Ajax--in ways I doubt your programming can comprehend." 

"Then why haven't you attempted to kill him?" Ajax wondered.

"Kill h-- _What are you talking about!?_ "

"My programming _does_ comprehend the honor codes of over four hundred different societies, including Andoria. Everything I know indicates the following sequence of events should occur: Your umbrage towards Commander Kreighen overwhelms your Starfleet duty; you seek vengeance in a traditional Andorian ritual such as the _Ushaan_ ; my program would require me to protect my commanding officer; you would disregard the threat of my intervention; you would force me to kill you."

Tirava was bewildered by the way in which he coldly described the potential for them to fight to the death. "It's not as simple as you make it sound..."

"It is to me. You said it's easy for you and the others to forget I'm a hologram. To you I blur the distinction between intelligent life and a mere set of complex algorithms. To me, there is no distinction--all of us are sets of complex algorithms. You receive inputs from the external stimuli around you, and compute and return outputs just as I do. You have the capacity to love Commander Kreighen or hate him, but you can only return one value in that operation."

She sighed. "I think you're going to find, Sergeant, that _my_ algorithms are _far_ more overloaded than yours." When she saw that he seemed satisfied by this explanation, she got up from the tactical console. "I think I will take that nap now. No need to report any of this to Jake."

"Acknowledged," Ajax nodded. "Good night, Lieutenant. Computer, deactivate Sergeant Ajax."


	8. Chapter 8

By oh-four hundred, over two dozen Borg vessels had gathered around the _Exsecuturus_. Even knowing they were rebels on his side didn't make the view less chilling for Commander Kreighen.

A minor controversy within Unimatrix Zero, given the dizzying number of different cultures represented within it, was the question of what to name the various cubes and spheres they had stolen away from the Collective. The only equitable solution was to use the language used by the ancient culture that had given rise to the Borg. Since the Collective only used verbal communication when telling an alien culture to surrender, its native tongue had fallen into disuse centuries ago. Kreighen's universal translator interpreted the names of the Zero ships in Latin--the _Liberandus_ , the _Insurgendum_ , the _Dirutura_ , and more. 

What passed for a bridge on Korok's sphere soon filled with the commanders of the fleet. Kreighen couldn't help looking for humans among the assembled visitors, in spite of the odds against it. Indeed, he could hardly identify the species he did see, although the Pendari standing well over two meters high was hard to miss.

"Comrades," General Korok bellowed, calling the meeting to order. "Most of you are by now aware that the human who freed Unimatrix Zero from the Borg, Kathryn Janeway, now leads an invasion force from the Alpha Quadrant against our enemy. She has provided me with a liaison from that armada, Lieutenant Commander Kreighen of Starfleet. Three weeks ago, his shuttle crew was responsible for deploying the subspace jamming signal which crippled Collective activity across twenty spatial grids. Together we have destroyed every enemy vessel in this sector, clearing the way toward out next target."

Korok gestured to Glinn Ledret, who called up a holographic projection of a tangled mass of Borg structures. "This," the Klingon continued, "is Intercomplex 934. The station boasts shipyards, forty-five independent power matrices, and over a million drones. With no ships in the area, and its interlink weakened, it is effectively defenseless to a full-scale attack."

Alpha Sorgim, Korok's Hirogen tactical officer, rose to present the basic strategy. "If the facility detects multiple transwarp conduits opening around it, it will immediately recognize the threat and the advantage will be lost. However, the intercomplex would find nothing suspicious in a single Borg vessel traveling toward it at low warp." He displayed a new projection of a convoy of Zero ships. "By traveling in single file, we mask our total numbers."

"We're not talking about hunter-gatherers moving through the jungle on foot," one of the Zeroes, an Annari, objected. Even if the Borg only see the lead ship, their sensors will pick up all of our warp signatures. We'll look like...like one man with twenty arms and legs."

"Don't forget who we're dealing with," Ledret cautioned. "The Borg think they're infallible even as their forces are wiped out and their station crumbles around them. As long as they see that one cube, they will assume that one cube is in full control of whatever curious readings are going on behind it. All we have to do is make sure the lead ship plays the part of a compromised tactical cube limping in for repairs."

"Once we're within weapons range," Korok continued, "the convoy will break formation and target the station's defense systems. We can assume the drones will still be following Borg directives, but without full connection to the Collective, they will be no match for us. Once their weapons are destroyed, we will begin large-scale efforts to purge the drones, until their numbers are dwindled enough to permit boarding parties."

Another Zero dissented. "I don't like this, Korok. Whatever else these humans have done for Unimatrix Zero, your human liaison is standing next to a photonic." She glared at the _Hrunting_ crew, specifically at Ajax.

Kreighen began to respond, until Doctor Ijhel cut him off. "What are you implying?" she demanded.

"Photonics cannot be trusted," the woman explained. "My people, the Lokirrim, learned that thirty years ago, when our servants and laborers betrayed us. I'm not about to put my faith in people who think they make reliable soldiers..."

Ijhel took it personally. "Madam, it's been my experience that the blame for defective programs lies in defective programmers. The quality of my work speaks for itself, at least to those who can appreciate--"

" _As you were_ , Doctor," Kreighen said curtly as he pulled her back.

"Indeed," Ledret agreed, approaching the other woman. "Aelarin, allow me to propose a compromise. Our plan calls for Korok to take command of your cube at the head of the convoy. As long as he's aboard the _Contemnens_ , you may as well transfer to the _Exsecuturus_ for the duration of the mission. That way you'll be right where you need to be to keep an eye on the hologram."

Aelarin considered it. "I'd prefer a compromise where we leave it deactivated on the nearest asteroid until this is over."

"Please," Ledret implored her. "You and I have known one another for years. You know the pride I have in my people. The doctor is my compatriot, and I stand by her work. If anything happens, I will take full responsibility."

"Our differences are our greatest strength, Aelarin," Korok added. "We cannot force one another into agreement. That is the way of our enemy."

"Very well, Korok," she relented. "But I trust your own people more than I do these visitors. I expect at least one Zero to accompany the photonic wherever he goes."

Kreighen looked to Ajax, seeking his approval before speaking on his behalf. The gesture seemed to surprise the hologram; he quickly assented. "We're fine with that," the commander announced. "Now, if that's settled, I'd like to focus just a little more on the part where we pick a fight with a million Borg drones."


	9. Chapter 9

There was no engineering section on a Borg ship; its decentralized design allowed systemwide repairs to be effected from anywhere. However, Jimenez found that performing his duties in the middle of a corridor to be distracting. The Pit served his purposes.

A standard Borg sphere would be filled with thousands of drones, regularly making use of its assimilation chamber to butcher innocents. The _Exsecuturus_ , by comparison, was running on a skeleton crew of Zeroes, who had no need of the chamber. Jimenez had claimed it as his own personal engine room.

He was working furiously at the console, deep within his element. The war, the mission, and his crew were out of his thoughts as he reallocated power to the navigational deflector array. "That should do it," he finally declared.

Tirava nodded and tapped her commbadge. "Tirava to bridge. Sorgem, what's our present speed?"

"Warp factor two, Lieutenant," the Hirogen voice answered.

"Acknowledged." She opened another channel at her console. "We're maxed out here, Commander."

On the viewscreen, Kreighen checked his instruments at the helm of the _Hrunting_. "I've got you on visual...checking sensors..." He checked and re-checked his data. "Sorry, gang. It's like your warp signature has faded a little, but I'm still getting readings."

Tirava's antennae flexed. "Sorgem, reduce speed to warp one point five."

"And now you're gone again," Kreighen reported after the sphere slowed down. "Looks like it doesn't matter how much juice we pump into the multi-adaptive shielding--the technology just can't hide something that big, going that fast."

"At one-point-five, we're barely producing a warp signature to hide," Tirava grumbled. "The Borg will die of old age before we get there."

"What about a cloaking device?" Jimenez suggested. I could probably build one based on the _Hrunting_ 's..."

"One of Korok's people brought that up," Kreighen answered. "And he and I both agree it's too risky. The _Hrunting_ has anti-assimilation safeguards, but if we put a cloak on a cube that gets captured by the Collective..." He didn't need to finish his thought; the cloak was one of the Alliance's most critical advantages in the war. "We'll have to do this at warp two and hope for the best."

"Commander--!"

He cut her protest short. "I don't like charging the Borg with my pants around my ankles any more than you do, Tirava. But Ledret did have a point--if we show the Borg what they want to see, they won't question it. There is _some_ masking; we'll just have to hope it's enough." Kreighen set a course back to the _Exsecuturus_. "Report your findings to Korok. I'll rendezvous with the sphere in fifteen minutes. _Hrunting_ out."

Tirava closed the channel and pounded her fist against the console. "You're _sure_ you can't divert any more power to the multi-adaptive shielding?"

"I was sure three hours ago," Jimenez replied. "We're already 150% past my original estimates. If this sphere was still under the Collective's control, they might be able to get it done, but--"

"They may get their chance," she snapped. Composing herself, she added, "I've got to see Korok. Try something else--anything else. I'll take what I can get."

Once she had gone, Jimenez finally had the Pit to himself. He spent the next hour examining the specs of the _Exsecuturus_ , looking for ways to further mask the warp signature with subspace fields or shield modulations. There were all sorts of ways to make a warp signature look like something else, but very few of them could make it look like nothing at all. That was what the cloaking device was for, and that was out of the question.

He had made little progress by the time Two of Six called upon him. "May I speak with you, Ensign?" she asked as she entered the chamber.

He looked up, slightly jarred by the interruption. "I--of course. What's up?"

"To better conceal our approach upon Intercomplex 934, we must broadcast subspace transmissions resembling the intercommunication of Borg drones," Two explained. "I have volunteered to organize an _ad hoc_ collective within the _Exsecuturus_."

Jimenez was dubious. "When the Borg on the station hear your thoughts, won't they realize you're not in the 'real' hive mind?"

"That is possible. However, the premise of our battle plan is that the station's own link is heavily damaged. If so, they will detect our voices, but not comprehend what we are saying. The alternative is to allow them to hear nothing when they detect the lead cube; that would arouse suspicion."

"Yeah...that may be just the edge we need." He shut down his console and began to pack his toolkit. "So what do you need me for?"

Two mulled over that statement before responding to it. "I believe have misrepresented my intent. Your skills are not required for the project. I am...uncertain why I felt it was relevant to convey that information..."

He smirked. "Sounds like you're beating around the bush." It immediately occurred to him that she wouldn't appreciate the idiom. "Sometimes when individuals want to say something, but are anxious about how to say it, they ramble. I wouldn't have thought you had it in you, Two."

"I must admit, I am unsure how to proceed on this matter." She seemed to search within herself, before finally straightening and looking directly at the engineer. "Ensign, I wish to offer you my services for sexual recreation."

His eyes nearly jumped out of his skull. "Sexu--! 'Recreation?'"

"Have I offended you?"

"Two, what's gotten into you?"

"Having been raised in the Collective, I have had little need for social interactions; however, as a human you are dependent upon them. Since you and I are now friends, I consider it my duty to fulfill that need to the best of my ability."

She stopped there. "Go on!" Jimenez insisted.

"Go on with what?"

"I've made friends before," he told her, exasperated. "Most of them didn't invite me to have sex with them!"

"My research into non-Borg sociology suggests that heterosexual friendships may often become physically intimate." She considered her own statement and amended it. "With the exception of--"

The ensign rubbed the bridge of his nose. "This isn't that exception, Two. It's just...this is coming out of nowhere..."

"We are about to engage in a prolonged battle, in which either of us may be killed. Further, I will soon be linked to other drones aboard the sphere, and thus unavailable to you. For your benefit, I determined that I should present the opportunity immediately."

He removed his hand from his face and saw that this conversation was still happening. "And what about your benefit? I don't know how they do things in the Delta Quadrant, but human women prefer to take their time with these things..."

"I am not human," Two noted. "My needs are irrelevant. As I said, I require little social fulfillment. I have familiarized myself with the intricacies of human courtship, but I believe it to be...inefficient for you to seduce me."

"Do I get a say in that?" He glanced over her body, encased from the neck down in Borg exo-plating. "What would I even... _do_...with you...exactly?"

She stepped closer to him. "I have studied various techniques," she said innocently. "I am...eager to attempt them. Human males can become frustrated over time without sexual release, and I estimate that it has been at least 279 hours since you--"

He pushed her back. "That's _enough_ , Two."

She blinked. "Then you have already finished?"

" _Two!_ " Jimenez straightened his uniform and tried to calm down. "As Borg go, you're an attractive woman, and I appreciate your...good intentions. But humans are _complicated_ , and you've got a lot to learn before you go...applying it in the field." He softened his expression and looked into her eyes. "I'm fine, really. Do you understand?"

"I am not certain I do," she conceded. "It appears you are correct: humans are more complex than I had expected. I will give the matter further consideration."

"Good." He smiled for the first time since she brought it up. "Look, I've...gotta go back to...the shuttle. Yeah. The _Hrunting_. I'll...talk to you later, all right? Right."

Jimenez pivoted on his right heel, and hoped Two hadn't been reading about the average walking speed of human males.


	10. Chapter 10

The Zero convoy lurched into motion at eighteen hundred hours, intending to arrive at Intercomplex 934 by oh-five hundred. A total of thirty ships had arrived--thirteen cubes, nine probe ships, six spheres, and two heavily-armored tactical vessels. By most standards it was an impressive show of force--as few as six Borg vessels could mean inescapable doom for an entire civilization. Against the Collective itself, however, it was a paltry fleet that would only survive the night through guile rather than brute force.

Unimatrix Zero needed the station. Although they had representatives scattered across half the galaxy (some enjoying more success than others), their forces this deep within Borg space had made few gains in their resistance effort. A permanent base of operations to serve as a staging ground would remedy that problem; to obtain one at the expense of the Collective was all the better.

There was little left for the _Hrunting_ crew to accomplish once the convoy was in motion, except to wait for the journey to end and the battle to commence. Kreighen had convinced Tirava and Jimenez to catch up on sleep in the shuttle, but Ijhel insisted upon using the lull to tinker with Ajax's program. For his own part, Kreighen couldn't tear himself away from the bridge of the _Exsecuturus_ , although the view from the middle of the convoy was hardly worth vigilant observation.

With Korok aboard the lead cube, his sphere was now under the command of Captain Aelarin, the Lokirrim who had objected to Ajax's presence. She was as bored as Kreighen. "This Federation you hail from," she opened. "Why is it so concerned with an enemy so far from its borders?"

He considered the question and did his best impression of a diplomat making first contact. "The cultures that comprise the Federation came together through their passion for the exploration of space. In fact, the service I belong to, Starfleet, is primarily concerned with scientific discovery, not military operations. Sometimes our curiosity leads us to meet new enemies before our time. Two years ago the Borg went out of their way to assimilate Bolarus IX, a Federation planet."

"Sixty thousand light years out of their way, from what Korok has told me. That would have been after the destruction of the Collective's transwarp hub."

Kreighen nodded. "We're still not sure how that one cube made the trip, unless it had already been on its way for years. But the Borg had already been detected in the Alpha Quadrant on at least seven different occasions. We've clearly got something they want."

Glinn Ledret interrupted the conversation. "Captain, the _Opprissurus_ is reporting an incoming vessel..."

Aelarin snapped to attention. "Borg?" she speculated. In this sector, there weren't many alternatives.

"Negative," Ledret answered. "It emerged from the nebula we just passed...registering as a Malon freighter."

"Malon?" Kreighen repeated. "What are they doing out here?"

Sorgem snorted from his tactical station. "What the Malon always do--spread their spoor across the quadrant, for Hirogen children to track."

"They're always searching for new places to dispose of their toxic waste," Aelarin added. "The risks don't matter to them; it's a wonder there aren't more of them wandering through Borg territory."

"No," Kreighen continued, "if they were looking for a dumping ground, they would have stayed in that nebula. Why go out of your way to follow a Borg fleet?"

Sorgem received the answer. "Captain, they are firing upon the _Opprissurus_!"

"Damage?" Aelarin asked.

"Minimal," the hunter replied. "The freighter's weaponry is unlikely to pose any threat."

"Hail them," Kreighen suggested.

"I fail to see the point," Ledret observed. "It's none of our concern if they want to buzz around us like a glob fly."

"That's exactly what the Collective thinks about us," Kreighen countered. "And it's been our greatest advantage against them. That glob fly thinks it knows something we don't." He turned to Aelarin. "We have nothing to lose by finding out what it is."

The captain shrugged and gestured to Sorgem to open a channel. "Malon export vessel, this is Captain Aelarin of Unimatrix Zero. We mean you no harm. We do _not_ represent the Borg Collective. Cease fire imm--"

The interior of the freighter appeared on Sorgem's viewscreen, but the young man at the helm was not Malon. He was lean, with scaly, vermilion skin marked by black streaks. A plume of bright feathers sprouted from his scalp. Kreighen recognized the look of aggrieved purpose in the alien's green, reptilian eyes as he spoke.  "You have laid waste to our society, and exploited my race! But I will die free! If but one of my people regains his honor, it will be vengeance enough for the Xhiryptyr'x!" He stabbed his talon at his console, ending the transmission.

Kreighen turned from the monitor to find the bridge of the _Exsecuturus_ stunned into silence. "I think I'm going to have to have a little talk with our friend."


	11. Chapter 11

"Red alert! All hands to battlestations!" 

Tirava had been dozing in the pilot's chair when the order was given. The alarm klaxon was not warranted by the situation, but it was sufficient to startle her out of her seat. She fumbled about for a moment before finding Jake Kreighen standing before her. "Not funny, Commander," she responded.

"Sorry, I didn't have time to wake you up gently _and_ drag Jimenez out of the cargo hold." He took the helm and keyed in the launch sequence. "Warm up the engines."

She shook off her fatigue and moved to tactical. "We can't be at the intercomplex yet..."

"The convoy's at all stop," he explained. "We got...'ambushed' by a Malon freighter."

"A _freighter_?"

"Yeah, well, he's not looking to win."

"Then he's off to an excellent start," she muttered. 

"It gets better," Kreighen continued. "The Malon can't recycle their antimatter waste, so they use these ships to haul it into space. Mister Deathwish is leaking theta radiation all over the fleet."

"Theta radiation?" Jimenez had by now hauled himself out of bed. "That's the last thing we need! The multi-adaptive shielding is barely holding up as it is...!"

Kreighen gestured for him to take his station. "That's what Korok was just telling me. Listen...the pilot isn't Malon--I think he stole the ship, and I _know_ he's mad at the Borg for attacking his homeworld."

" _Uzaveh_..." Tirava unconsciously ran her finger along one of the scars from her assimilation. "He thinks we're the Collective."

Jimenez was just as disturbed, if not as upset. After three weeks among Unimatrix Zero it was no longer easy for him to associate them with the relentless scourge of the galaxy. "Do you think he'll understand that a Starfleet shuttle wouldn't be palling around with real drones?"

"I don't know," Kreighen admitted, "and it took some doing to convince Korok that it was worth a try."

"Meaning what?" Tirava demanded.

"The mission's too important to let one ship get in the way. Korok's giving us thirty minutes. If we can't get through to this guy, they'll shoot him down." He shifted topics to avoid giving Tirava another chance to argue. "Preparing for departure. Ensign, I'll need one-quarter impulse when we clear the bay."

"Aye, sir," Jimenez acknowledged. "What about Ijhel and Ajax?"

"We'll need Ajax at his best when we reach the intercomplex," Kreighen answered. "I told Ijhel to get his matrix in tip-top shape. Besides, I'm hoping this won't take long."

The _Hrunting_ took its time exiting the sphere, in an attempt to ensure that the attacking vessel got a good look at the evidence of non-Borg personnel participating in the convoy. It came about and cautiously approached the freighter, which was still firing in vain upon the Zeroes' ships.

Kreighen opened a hailing frequency and crossed his fingers. "Malon vessel, this is Lieutenant Commander Jacob Kreighen of the United Federation of Planets." He paused, realizing this was sounding quite a bit like Aelarin's earlier hail, which hadn't gotten them anywhere. He decided to try something different. "My government is in a state of war with the Borg Collective."

"That's good," Tirava whispered. "'The enemy of my enemy...'"

The freighter ceased fire, but it did not immediately respond. "We, ah, wish to discuss our mutual interests," Kreighen continued, "as well as the Borg fleet that is...currently under our custody."

The two ships faced off, in silence, for over a minute. "They're not buying it..." Jimenez warned through his teeth.

The shuttle's viewscreen finally sprang to life. It was the same man as before. "You have captured these ships?" he asked starkly.

"Not...personally, no," the commander said. "We're escorting them. I can explain in more detail if you would come aboard my shuttle..."

"Do you intend to destroy them?"

"Let me tell you why I don't need to--"

"Then you are no better." the reptilian snapped. "You do not understand what they have done to us! Honor demands blood for blood!"

"I've suffered at least as much as your people," Tirava exclaimed. She lunged past Kreighen to give the alien a good look at her scars. "Honor won't be satisfied by wasting your firepower on ships that won't shoot back."

He scowled, baring his fangs. "Then perhaps _you_ will shoot back," he threatened as he cut off the transmission.

Jimenez didn't want to wait for Tirava to return to her post to know what the sensors had on the freighter. "He's moving in...powering up his weapons..."

"Shields up!" Kreighen ordered, looking right through Tirava. As she leaped back to tactical he took evasive action. "Setting a new heading...two seven four mark mark oh three eight, warp four!" 

The _Hrunting_ turned and shot off into space. The Malon ship adjusted into an intercept course, and fired, rattling the Federation shuttle.

"Direct hit!" Tirava reported. "Aft shields are down to eighty-four percent. Where are we going?"

"I've got half an hour to lead him the hell away from the convoy," Kreighen explained to his crew. "All you two have to do is keep me in one piece while I do it."


	12. Chapter 12

"Truthfully, I'm more comfortable working without an audience," Ijhel said aloud as she ran her diagnostics on Sergeant Ajax. The Zero posted to the Pit wasn't moved by this--standing orders were to keep the holographic soldier under close watch.

Ajax stood at attention, having nothing better to do for the duration of the procedure. "Perhaps you could work more quickly, then."

She looked up at him with a sneer. "This is critical work, it can't be rushed."

"I've functioned perfectly for weeks," he countered. "What are you trying to accomplish, anyway?"

Ijhel was never afraid to discuss the details of her work. "Your holomatrix contains thousands of subroutines vital to your military performance, but they're scattered across dozens of extensions to the core medical program."

"You make me sound like a hypospray with a bayonet tied to it."

"More like a surgeon carrying around a copy of _The Art of War_ ," she clarified. "In a sense, you have to stop and read the book every time you consider a tactical decision. So I'm relocating several key subroutines to reduce the processing time."

Ajax considered this. "Strange...I haven't noticed any delay in my reaction time..."

"You wouldn't," Ijhel confirmed. "At the presentation layer you're designed to have a humanoid perception of time. But in computational terms, this overhaul will speed up your combat decisions significantly--I estimate an average of point seven seconds."

"A fraction of a second hardly sounds _critical_ ," he protested.

"It is _now_ ," she argued. "I've already decompiled your tactical extension, so I have to complete the changes just to get them reinstalled."

"You could have just left well enough alone! There's no benefit to this--"

Ijhel straightened, glowering with a fire in her dark eyes. "Your code is sloppy and poorly formed, patched together almost at random! If I'm going to continue to develop and maintain your system, I have to redesign it into something I can work with! And in case you were wondering, you do _not_ get a say in the matter!"

Her rant was interrupted by the sound of applause down the corridor. "Well spoken, Doctor," Glinn Ledret smiled as he entered the chamber, "well spoken indeed! I take it your project was inherited from human researchers."

Ijhel rolled her eyes in agreement. "They do tend to coddle their holograms. You could probably paint eyes and a mouth on a hyperspanner, and they'd try to empathize with it." She gave a thought to Ajax and amended herself. "Though I must admit that their advances in artificial intelligence are...striking."

"Assuredly." Ledret circled around Ajax, admiring him. "I mean no insult to you, Sergeant. However, I suspect that if you had been created by Cardassians, your...independence would be quickly identified as a design flaw."

Ajax considered a dozen rejoinders, but minded his tongue. "I can only assume Starfleet sees independence as a valuable asset for a warrior. Their... _recent_...military history does seems to justify that theory."

Ijhel saw the tension building between the two men. "Kerim, I'm afraid I don't have time right now for your company. I've got quite a bit of work to finish here..."

"That's why I came down," he explained, still examining Ajax. "The convoy has been halted until Commander Kreighen can resolve a...minor situation. Our arrival at the intercomplex will be delayed; you'll have more time to complete your work." He abruptly changed the subject. "Tell me, Utana, are you rewriting his matrix in Vole?"

Ajax raised an eyebrow. "Vole?"

"It's a...Cardassian computer language," Ijhel explained. "It's a rather old one, though. The Science Ministry de-emphasized it years ago."

"Ah, well, I was never much of a programmer," Ledret shrugged. "All I know of it is that it was created with the intent of allowing anyone to improve upon it--not unlike the way Ijhel describes the history of your program, Sergeant. I always liked the story behind its name. Are you familiar with it?"

"I'm a soldier, not an etymologist."

"You see," Ledret continued, as he would regardless of the answer, "long ago on Cardassia Prime, there was a powerful kingdom, whose military might was a result of its prized riding hounds. So fine were these steeds that the kingdom's soldiers could turn back any enemy. Breeding these animals was perfected to an artform by the royal family, who carefully regulated the practice.

"One day, the merchant class overthrew the king so that they could create a smaller, weaker government that would stay out of the way of their trade. When they took over the breeding of the hounds, each of them offered his own input on how to save costs, usually to maximize his personal profits. One said the hounds should be smaller. Another insisted they nevertheless eat twice as much, since he sold their feed. A third suggested they should breed more quickly. Yet another complained that it was too expensive to repair their injured limbs; better for them to have six legs so they can afford to lose one. And so on and so forth.

"Ten years later, the country was under attack, and the cavalry once more rode onto the battlefield. And this time they were routed, because by then they were no longer riding the finest hounds, but miserable Cardassian voles. And to this day, wherever a society is not strong enough to combat self-interest with order, the voles invariably appear to thrive upon the ruins."

"A charming little tale," Ajax said flatly. Ledret was by now standing nose-to-nose with him. 

"I've always thought so. I've occasionally wondered if it was based on true events...if the catastrophic battle truly occurred in some fashion, and if a strong leader eventually saved the failed kingdom and drove out the voles. Sadly, I lack your obvious familiarity with military history, recent or otherwise. Whereas Starfleet may value that quality in their personnel, Central Command always preferred for its soldiers to focus on building a _future_ for Cardassia."

Ajax was stone-faced. "Fortunately for us, then, the future for both of our governments casts us as allies."

"Of course." Ledret smiled broadly and stepped back. "But then, the future is like your program, Sergeant--difficult to interpret without strong guidance..." he paused and turned to Ijhel, "...by a single brilliant mind."

"You're very kind, Kerim," Ijhel replied, with apprehension in her voice. "But I do have to return to my work."

"Forgive me, Doctor--I won't waste any more of your time. It's just been so long since I've had another Cardassian to converse with." Ledret began to make his exit, then turned back toward her. "It will be hours before the battle; perhaps when you're through here we could share dinner?"

"I'd have to check that Kreighen won't need me," she considered.

"I'll clear it with him when he returns," the Cardassian man assured her. "I'm certain he won't object."


	13. Chapter 13

"Aft shields down to twelve percent!" Tirava reported as the _Hrunting_ shook around her. "Commander, we can't keep running with him nipping at our tail!"

"She's right, sir," Jimenez agreed. "The freighter has more than enough power to chase us, blow us up, and intercept the convoy all over again."

Kreighen was quietly defiant for several moments, then grudgingly conceded the debate. "All right, I'm dropping out of warp. Get ready to divert power to the forward shields."

"We can't stand up to them head to head!" she argued.

"We're not going to." Kreighen studied the Malon export vessel on his navigational sensors. It had come out of warp just as he had, and was now sixty kilometers behind him. He came about at full impulse, weaving through incoming fire, until he flew past the nose of the freighter, under its ventral hull. The second he was out of the path of the attacker's forward weapons array, he cut the engines and used the maneuvering thrusters to pitch up. 

"Fire!" he commanded. Inertia carried the shuttle along with its nose pointed straight up, allowing the _Hrunting_ 's forward phaser banks to gouge a continuous tear in the belly of the freighter. 

"Direct hit," Tirava announced, somewhat unnecessarily. "His shields are..." she paused to re-check her readings. "Shields are down completely..."

"I'm guessing our friend didn't take that ship from the Malon without a fight," Kreighen speculated.

"Maybe, but what was he going to do with it?" Jimenez wondered. "He's barely a match for one shuttle, let alone a Borg armada..."

"Like I said," Kreighen answered soberly, "he wasn't looking to win."

"Or give up," Tirava interjected. "The freighter is coming about, launching spatial charges..."

Kreighen piloted the _Hrunting_ into an intricate dance, avoiding as much of the volley as he could. The charges that collided with the forward shields buffeted the shuttle, but caused little damage. "Target his weapons systems, Tirava," he ordered. "This isn't going to end until he's got nothing left to fight with."

The Andorian began to question him, but obeyed. After nearly a decade of developing weapons to fight the Borg, Starfleet's armaments more than outclassed that of the Malon. Without her shields, the freighter was quickly declawed.

"Now then," the commander declared, "Let's see if we can--" His hopes for a peaceful solution were dashed when the freighter lurched toward the _Hrunting_. "...the hell? What's he got left?"

"I'm not picking up weapons signatures," Jimenez reported. "But the theta radiation might be interfering with--"

"He's going to ram us," Tirava explained.

Kreighen turned to her in disbelief. "You really think he'd take it that far?"

"I do," she answered, "Because that's what I would do in his place."

"Dammit..." He moved the shuttle off, trying to keep ahead of the freighter, but it continued to match his course. "Try to disable his engines. Maybe when he's dead in the water he'll--"

"Let it be over, pinkskin."

He turned to her in disbelief. "What are you saying?"

"This alien is not a human. You can't force him to negotiate, you can't reason with him, and--most importantly--you can't convince him you're not protecting his blood enemy. He believes that because he _needs_ to believe it."

"Twenty minutes ago you were horrified that he thought we were affiliated with the Borg. Now you want to destroy him like they would?"

"If I could I would make him face the facts, and let him fight the Borg alongside me. But he'll destroy _us_ before that can happen. The only other alternative is to make it impossible for him to seek retribution. At best, he'll grow old and die in dishonor."

"Honor...dishonor..." Kreighen grumbled as he kept avoided the freighter. "I'm sick of hearing about it! Everybody in the galaxy uses it to justify doing something foolish, and the minute anybody calls them on it, it's 'You could never understand a matter of honor!' Maybe it's as awful for me to kill this guy as it would be for him to go on living! The only difference is at least I'm trying to consider his perspective. Does he give a damn about mine?" He glanced back to Tirava. "Do _you_?"

She made no attempt to answer that question. "If you move us into position, I can be the one to finish it."

"Like hell." Kreighen tapped a few command codes into his console, locking Tirava out of her station and transferring tactical operations to the helm. "Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I can delegate it." He maneuvered into view of the freighter's engines, and fired until its warp core breached, destroying it.

Kreighen jumped out of his chair the second the battle was over. "There," he said to Tirava, "everybody can go to Klingon heaven now. You have the helm, Lieutenant. Contact the _Contemnens_ and tell them we're on our way back. I need a shower."


	14. Chapter 14

As Ijhel closed up her portable workstation, she issued final commands into its user interface. "Computer, run Military Assault Holographic program, Mark III revision beta."

The program known as Ajax had no true physical substance beyond a small spherical device currently sitting on the floor. This miniature holographic emitter instantly responded to the command, and projected photonic force fields that carried it a meter into the air. From there it completed the form of Ajax's body and integrated it with his artificial consciousness in a split second.

"Now, was that so bad?" she asked him.

"I can't perceive any enhancement," he replied dubiously.

She shook her head. "The upgrades I'm planning are meant to incrementally free up your emitter's memory to allow for new extensions," she explained. "You won't experience any noticeable improvement, but that doesn't mean the process isn't worth the effort. If I'd realized you would need instant gratification, I'd have prepared you a holographic _jumja_ stick for being such a good patient."

"Excuse me, Doctor..." Ijhel turned to see what she had ignored during the reinitialization sequence--the Zero assigned to chaperone Ajax had been relieved by another ex-drone. He was another Cardassian, one she had never met until now. "I need to speak with you..."

"If you're asking her to dinner," Ajax quipped, "She's already booked."

The cyborg ignored him and continued. "I am Gil Zosek. I served with Glinn Ledret before we were assimilated. I take it you have met with him."

"I--I did, briefly," she stammered.

"I was freed from the Collective by Unimatrix Zero last year. When Ledret asked that I be assigned to the _Exsecuturus_ , I thought he wanted to work with a familiar face--a fellow Cardassian. At first we were as close as brothers. But then our conversations began to turn to home, and things began to change. He's been reassigning me to more and more duties that keep me away from the bridge--systems maintenance, propulsion, weapons."

The next part was mildly embarrassing to him, and he struggled to address it. "When we encountered the _Hrunting_ , I'll admit I was...looking forward to the company of a Cardassian woman. So I found it curious that my duties kept me even more isolated--not just from the bridge, but the bulk of the sphere. It hasn't been easy to get in contact with you, Doctor. I had to pretend to relieve your guard just to get this close to you."

Ajax tried to connect the dots. "Sounds like some sort of Cardassian pack dynamics to me."

"Hardly," Ijhel scoffed. "Cardassian men don't try to establish dominance without an audience. More likely, Ledret considered making Zosek an offer, and now he's chosen me instead...and he's worried Zosek might talk me out of it."

Zosek lowered his eyes. "I don't how I could. I don't even know what he wants. We never discussed anything specific."

"You had a falling out," Ajax recalled. "Obviously something you said made him reconsider his opinion of you."

"I've considered that, hologram, and I've never understood what it could have been. Except...in Unimatrix Zero, each of us has different motives, but we all see the Borg as the greatest threat to our respective interests. Once I was liberated, Cardassian-Federation brinkmanship seemed secondary, as long as the Collective might one day destroy us all. Ledret...doesn't quite see it the same way."

"If he doesn't care about the Borg," Ijhel wondered, "why is he the first officer of a Zero sphere on its way to capture a Borg intercomplex?"

"Don't misunderstand, Doctor. He believes in what we're doing. But he's been consumed with...with..." Zosek struggled to speak, then struggled to think. 

Ajax stepped forward, urgency in his voice. "What's happening, Zosek?"

"M-my neural transceiver..." he gargled as he fell to his knees. "Voices..."

The Cardassian suddenly sprang back to his feet. He raised his right arm, and slowly turned to face Ijhel and Ajax with the blank stare of a Borg drone.

***

With the Malon freighter destroyed, the _Hrunting_ 's return flight was uneventful. Tirava decided to let Kreighen sulk in the aft section, and continued to pilot the shuttle all the way back to the convoy. She was quiet, perhaps sulking in her own right, until the Zero fleet came within visual range.

"Slowing to impulse," she announced. "Contact the _Exsecuturus_ , Nathan."

Jimenez transmitted the hailing frequency, but received no response. "Something's wrong. They're not answering..."

"Hail them again," she ordered. " _Hrunting_ to _Exsecuturus_. Request docking permission. Please resp--" 

She felt a familiar buzzing in her head, something unsettling enough to give her pause. "Get...get Kreighen..." she mumbled. Jimenez could hear the dread in her voice, and rushed to the aft section for the commander. 

Now alone, Tirava brought the shuttle to a dead stop and clutched her forehead, her antenna twitching wildly. Her Andorian instincts raged within her, trying to settle her fight-or-flight responses. Fear and anger washed over her, and she struggled to control them both. 

Then, all at once, the buzzing stopped. In her relief, Tirava fell from her seat. She did not notice that the at the same moment the noise in her mind ceased, the _Exsecuturus_ jumped to warp on a course perpendicular to the convoy's flight plan. By the time Jimenez and Kreighen discovered her on the floor, the sphere had vanished into the night, trillions of kilometers away.


	15. Chapter 15

Ajax reacted instantly. Grabbing Ijhel's wrist, he pulled her away from the thing that had been Gil Zosek only moments earlier. It continued to shamble towards them, moving robotically as if controlled from afar. When he had been a member of Unimatrix Zero, the implants covering Zosek's body had seemed less prevalent; now the Cardassian man seemed to have disappeared, enveloped in the cold exo-plating of the Borg.

"Run," Ajax ordered. His tone was calm, but deliberate. For once Ijhel didn't argue with him. This was now his element, and her survival now depended on his ability to protect her. Together they sprinted out of the Pit, never looking back as Zosek plodded after them.

As they entered the corridor Ajax glanced in each direction, instantly assessing his options. He could see Zeroes approaching to his left, and he couldn't risk them having been subverted like Zosek. Without hesitation he led Ijhel to the right, at the fastest speed he believed she could maintain.

"Where are we going?" she called to him.

"Away from them!" he shouted. "Now save your breath and _move_!"

The Borg at the other end of the corridor opened fire on them. Ajax's programming immediately recognized that the forced plasma beams hit the wall at angles intended to only seem like near misses. Warning shots. That indicated that he and Ijhel were to be taken alive, and perhaps unharmed. For assimilation? He couldn't dwell on their motivation just yet. But knowing what they were and were not prepared to do gave him some room to work with.

Ajax rounded a corner and came face to face with another drone--the same blank stare, the same crude tactic of meandering forward. Ijhel gasped, startled by the sudden run-in. Ajax was dispassionate as he thrust his palm into the cyborg's face, knocking it back with superhuman strength. Just then he could hear more approaching from behind. They were already beginning to close in around the pair.

"Keep your back to my back," he told her, "and yell if you see anything coming." Ajax stretched out his right arm and activated his melee subroutines, causing his holomatrix to materialize a Vulcan lirpa in his hand. The enormous blade at one end of the staff would be there if needed, but he hoped the blunt weight on the other end would be enough for today. As the Borg descended upon him, Ajax rammed the weapon into their heads, cracking skulls and toppling drones, but not killing them. Minutes ago these had been his allies, and until he knew what had happened he was determined to minimize their casualties.

"Ah, I do believe something is coming!" Ijhel watched with horror as more drones approached her. All she heard behind her was the sound of Ajax dispatching the ones coming from the other direction. She was terrified, but her people did not let terror stop them from acting. Reaching into her jumpsuit, she retrieved a small type-1 hand phaser. "I suppose there's no sense saving this for another occasion," she mused before firing upon the Borg.

"Where did you get that?" Ajax demanded as he fought on.

"Come now, Sergeant," she joked, "a lady has to take care of herself. You never know what disreputable sorts might break into the weapons locker on the _Hrunting_!"

He glanced over his shoulder to watch her shoot the attackers. "Try to clear a path--we've got to keep moving!"

"A path to where? There's no way off of this ship!"

"Don't think like that! I'm going to get you out of this!"

Ijhel increased her weapon's setting, and fired haphazardly at the mounting numbers. "No, you're not! You're just saying that because it's Starfleet protocol to keep my spirits up!"

"What makes you so sure--?"

"Because I debugged that subroutine an hour ago, you dolt! _'Don't give up on me, Doctor!'_ "

"Don't give up on me, Do-- _damn it_!" Ajax took his frustration out on the first Borg that presented itself. "I'm going to save you whether you like it or not, you insufferable little--"

"If you want her to live," said a drone, "you had better dispose of your weapon. Immediately."

Ajax was surprised to hear it speak, let alone offer terms of surrender. After quickly weighing the alternatives, he willed his holographic lirpa into nothingness. "Do as he says," he told Ijhel. When the drones stood down in unison, he responded to the one that had spoken. "Then you're _not_ the Collective."

"I suppose I am _a_ collective," answered the drone. "I'm still mastering the art of controlling so many minds. I believe if you were to resist me a second time, I could display more...finesse in subduing you."

Ijhel's chest heaved as she tried to slow her heart. "It can't be..." 

Another drone standing in her view broke into a smug, Cardassian smile. "False modesty does not become you, Utana. Surely this is not the most effort a man has made to have dinner with you..."


	16. Chapter 16

"Tirava!" Commander Kreighen exclaimed at the sight of her crumpled on the floor. Alongside with Ensign Jimenez he helped her up. "What happened?"

"Voices," she answered weakly. "It was like voices from the Collective...but too vague...like a low buzz."

Jimenez happened to look outside the cockpit window. "Commander, the _Exsecuturus_ is gone!"

Kreighen was so stunned that he nearly allowed Tirava to drop back to the ground. He helped her up against Jimenez's shoulder and walked toward the cockpit, as if searching for the missing sphere. "This can't be a coincidence."

"Some of the Zeroes were creating a temporary hive mind," Jimenez observed as he set Tirava in her chair. "They just wanted to produce enough neural traffic to help disguise the convoy.

Kreighen noticed a blinking light at the helm. "We're receiving a hail," he said. "If all the Zeroes got hit as bad as Tirava, Korok's probably more confused than we are." 

When he put the transmission onscreen, it was not General Korok that greeted them, but another familiar face, wearing an uncharacteristic smile. "Hello, Nathan."

"Is that...Two of Six?" Jimenez asked incredulously.

"Only partially, I'm afraid," was the response from Two's lips, if not herself. "However, I sensed her strong interest in speaking with you and thought this would be an appropriate gesture. You are addressing Glinn Ledret."

"Ledret?" Kreighen repeated. "What the hell have you done?" The answer began to dawn on him. "The decoy hive mind was _your_ idea, wasn't it?"

"An excellent deduction, Commander, if a late one. In order to take command of this sphere, it was necessary to arrange for its crew to be of one mind--my mind being the logical choice."

"What about Ijhel and Ajax?" Jimenez countered.

Ledret--through Two--stretched his smile into a confident grin. "They are unharmed, Ensign. I have no ill will toward them, or toward Unimatrix Zero."

"Then why are you doing this?" Kreighen asked, making whatever attempt he could to reason with the man. "Where are you going? The fleet is going to need all the help they can get in the invasion..."

"Suffice it to say that I have...higher priorities. My skills are no doubt valuable against the Borg. But for the salvation of Cardassia, they are _vital_. My duty, then, is evident."

"Cardassia is _fine_ ," Kreighen argued. "I was just there, before the war, as part of a peacekeeping mission--"

Two's face grew hostile. " _That_ is precisely the problem, Mister Kreighen! The Federation seeks to expand its sphere of influence to absorb Cardassia just as it did with Bajor! It is my highest obligation to uphold the sovereignty of my people, and re-establish the Cardassian Union as the pre-eminent power in the Alpha Quadrant. Nothing--not even the Borg--may take precedence."

"Let's say you're right," Kreighen offered. "Your fatherland is sixty thousand light years away. Even the _Exsecuturus_ 's transwarp coil can't get you all the way there."

"That is _my_ concern, Commander, not yours, though you may be assured that it is of no consequence. In any case, Doctor Ijhel's support for my cause is implicit. As for your hologram, I am prepared to arrange for its safe return to you, once I am certain you cannot interfere with my agenda."

"That's not good enough, Ledret--"

"It will have to be. Farewell, Commander. We will not meet again." Two nodded politely, and closed the channel. Kreighen promptly punched the nearest bulkhead.

"Commander," Tirava spoke up, the strength in her voice returning. "The _Contemnens_ is hailing us."

"Onscreen," he muttered.

General Korok's face now filled the main viewer. "Commander, have you eliminated the Malon freighter?"

"The frei--?" Kreighen was nearly speechless. "General, do you realize what just happened?"

Korok was resolute. "Yes--we picked up Ledret's transmission from your shuttle. The _freighter_ , Commander."

"I destroyed it, all right? Don't you even care about Ledret?"

"Commander, I do not take desertion lightly," the Klingon growled. "If he were within arm's length I would disembowel him right here. But a warrior must be control his fury. The Borg are the true enemy, and I can spare no effort to punish one Cardassian _taHqeq_. The convoy has recovered from Ledret's diversion, and will proceed to Intercomplex 934 in ten minutes. You are cleared for docking in the _Contemnens_."

Kreighen balled his hands into fists, but then finally took a deep breath. "Stand by, General," he answered, and muted the channel. 

He turned to address his crew. "I have to go after him."

"With one shuttle?" Jimenez scoffed.

"He's right," Tirava added. "This won't be like chasing crippled Borg cubes that fight by rote. Ledret will crush you the second you're in weapons range."

"I _know_ the odds," Kreighen shot back. "I'll drop you off with Korok--charging into a full-scale battle won't be much safer, but it's the best I can offer. But I _have_ to do this. Ijhel and Ajax are a part of this crew, under my command. If it weren't for me none of you would even be out here. I can't abandon any of you."

Jimenez and Tirava considered the matter in silence. After a minute or so, they looked to one another, and finally to Kreighen. "Two wouldn't have agreed to Ledret's plans. I have to make sure she's all right..."

"It's a false choice for me, pinkskin," Tirava grumbled, her antennae belying her umbrage. "But I suppose you're too human to understand that I'm honor-bound to fight by your side."

Kreighen smiled slightly. "I guess I am," he replied. Turning back to the viewscreen, he re-opened the commlink to the _Contemnens_. "General, request permission to disembark from the convoy."

The Klingon was taken aback by the statement, but found no cause to question it. "Permission granted. _Qapla'_ to us both, Commander. It is a good day to die..."

"...And the day is not yet over," Kreighen added as he closed the channel.


	17. Chapter 17

The drones quickly separated Ijhel from Ajax and escorted her to the bridge. Once there, she was greeted by Glinn Ledret--this time in the flesh. "Hello, Utana," he smiled. "So good to see you again...with my own eyes, that is."

She kept her guard up. "Begging your pardon, Kerim," she opened, "but I do hope your allusions to dinner were more than an ironic pretext. It turns out that being ambushed by an army of Borg drones does wonders for the appetite."

"You have my deepest apologies. As for dinner, look no further." He gestured to a worktable, where several dishes awaited. "Although Unimatrix Zero has little need for replicators, I believe you'll find Borg technology is suited to the task."

Ijhel looked toward the table, and then at the two drones flanking her. The pair backed away and left the room the moment Ledret noticed her suspicion, at which point she cautiously approached the meal he had prepared for her. "Is that...tojal?"

"It is. If the aroma is any indication, the Borg have done a far better job assimilating Cardassian cuisine than your Starfleet handlers." He presented a chair, apparently constructed for the occasion. "Please."

Ijhel took her seat and picked at the tojal as if it might leap up and assimilate her at any moment. She didn't delay too long, however, for fear that the delicacy might grow cold. The flavor was exquisite after months of viinerine and pâté, though she did her best not to let on. "Agreeable enough," she admitted, "although anything would be an improvement."

Ledret sat in another chair across the table. Unable to process food, he was content with conversation. "I feared you might not care for it at all. I've heard the Science Ministry prefers a more...cosmopolitan menu."

"After the first two years there, I had my fill of alien food," she explained. "Have you heard of _pepp'ronipi'za_?"

"Should I have?"

"I believe it's...Tellarite, perhaps? Picture, if you will, an oily piece of bread, slathered with coagulated milk and cured meat. I used an entire jar of yamok sauce trying to mask the taste."

Ledret chuckled with a politician's laughter. "I knew I had not misjudged you, Utana. You and I are very much alike."

"Is that why you tested me last night?" she countered. "You didn't need me to tell you about the Dominion War. Or would you have me believe you decided to do all of this in one day?"

"Your perceptiveness speaks to my point," he noted. "News from the Alpha Quadrant was among the data transferred to Unimatrix Zero during its first encounter with _Voyager_. My information is perhaps several years out of date, but concerning the fate of Cardassia I know what I need to know. Including the fact that you are sympathetic to my cause."

Ijhel sipped from a glass of kanar. "That would depend on what your cause _is_. I suppose it's obvious you plan to shift the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant, although I would think by now you could trust me with the specifics."

"Ah, and that is where the redoubtable Sergeant Ajax becomes an issue," he answered. "The truth, Utana, is that while the kernel of my plan has been set for years, the details are only becoming clear now that certain pieces have recently fallen into place. You and your photonic masterwork are central to the plot."

"Then as long as we're being honest with one another," she stated, "the truth is that I am not Utana Ijhel. I'm an artist from Culat who assumed her identity so that I could see the galaxy. The hologram learned my secret and took pity on me; he pretends to let me modify his program so that no one will suspect."

He chuckled again. "It has been far, far too long," he observed, "since I have had the pleasure of hearing a Cardassian woman spin lies." Ledret was unnerving when he was amused; he was chilling when he was aroused. 

"Then I suppose you'll need more from me than a painting," she concluded.

Ledret came to the point. "Ajax is a simulation of a Starfleet soldier, using Starfleet's combat records to simulate the experience of a seasoned veteran. Put simply, it knows as much as Commander Kreighen--perhaps even more--about the military status of Cardassia and the Federation."

"By the same token," Ijhel pointed out, "Ajax is programmed to be as reluctant as Kreighen to disclose sensitive information."

"Then it is fortunate that I happen to know a talented artist," he riposted. Knowing she would have misgivings, he pressed forward. "Utana, I do not ask this of you lightly. I know what Mister Ajax means to you."

"You do?"

"You're like an engineer who treats her stardrive like a firstborn son," Ledret explained. "You've devoted your best work to perfecting this hologram, and the thought of tearing it apart upsets you. But what I'm asking you to do is no different than extracting encrypted data from a stolen datarod."

"Except the data's not encrypted," she argued, "beyond the fact that the rod wants to conceal it."

"I admire your loyalty, Doctor," he confided, "but it is misplaced. You created Ajax in a mission to provide Starfleet with an army of holographic anti-Borg soldiers. That mission is now over. You must adapt to the challenges of your new duties. We stand on the precipice of a bold new Cardassia, one that will need strong young women such as yourself...and will _not_ need holographic humans."

Ijhel pushed her plate away from her, having finished her meal. "I must say, Kerim, your rhetoric is most elegant...and quite compelling."

This deeply flattered the glinn. "Then you'll assist me with Ajax's files?"

"I always intended to," she confessed. "I simply wanted to see how persuasive you could really be..."


	18. Chapter 18

Kreighen was barely out of the pilot's seat for twenty seconds before he asked. "Are you sure you'll be all right?"

Tirava shrugged it off. "I'm _fine_. Ledret's personal hive mind just caught me off guard, that's all. I don't think it's strong enough to overwhelm me."

"Well, I'll just be in the aft section if you need me--"

"I _know_."

Kreighen nodded and stepped back. Then he thought twice about it. "Remember, he's probably at low warp so that the multi-adaptive shielding can mask his ion trail. You need to use an active polaron scan to--" She gave him an all-too-familiar glare. "I'll, uh, be in the aft section."

By the time he arrived there, Ensign Jimenez had already reconfigured the medical station to display a series of star charts. Current long-range sensor scans, as well as data obtained throughout _Voyager_ 's original journey through the Delta Quadrant, filled every screen on the port bulkhead. "Just about ready for you, Commander," he announced. "It's no astrometrics lab, but it'll have to do."

Kreighen nodded. "The _Exsecuturus_ is on a haphazard course, stopping at every nebula and protostar along the way to throw us off the scent. But since we're in the middle of Borg space, and none of the Collective's ships would be sneaking around, it's not so hard to follow Ledret." He stepped toward one of the consoles and called up the _Hrunting_ recent flight path and the suspected trail. "The zig-zagging is going along this general direction, so right now I've got Tirava going straight up the middle."

"There's no indication of any wormholes or spatial anomalies along that heading," Jimenez reported. "The problem is that _Voyager_ didn't spend any more time in this region than we have."

"What about Underspace?" Kreighen suggested. "The Vaadwaur had their corridors running throughout the quadrant. Could there be an access point around here?"

Jimenez called up the relevant data. "Nothing. The Vaadwaur committed their charts to memory to protect their secrets, so all we have is what _Voyager_ thought to ask about. I don't see how Ledret could know any more than we do."

"Damn...there's only so many ways to get from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant, and on top of that Ledret is obviously in a hurry. He couldn't be planning to use his transwarp coil the whole way..."

"He couldn't if he wanted to. Coils are only designed to last for a maximum of six hours of operation. He'd get maybe a third of the way to Cardassia before it'd burn out, and he wouldn't have the resources to build a new one."

"Six hours?" It bewildered Kreighen's instincts. In his experience, the Borg built their technology to last.

"Commander, we look at transwarp propulsion in terms of how it benefits _us_ ," the engineer explained. "Shortening travel time, allowing exploration of remote sectors, jumping across the galaxy--that's all irrelevant to the Borg. They've got cubes all over the Delta Quadrant; if they want to assimilate a Ledosian they don't need to send a cube all the way from the Nekrit Expanse. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers estimates that for a transwarp coil on a typical Borg vessel, the mean time between unit replacement is about seventy-five thousand hours, just because it only gets used for short trips. If a cube wanted to go further than that, it'd use the transwarp network."

"Except that _Voyager_ destroyed the network," Kreighen considered. "Do we have their charts from that incident?"

Jimenez called up a map and juxtaposed it with the _Hrunting_ 's telemetry. "This is the last known configuration of the network before it was collapsed eight years ago."

Kreighen stabbed his finger at the screen. "There. Ledret's taking the long way, but he's headed straight for that exit aperture."

"There may still be some residual subspace distortions there," the ensign supposed, "but even if Ledret could reopen it, the hub it led to is gone. It's a door to nowhere."

The career pilot was quickly getting out of his element--his background was flying ships, not figuring out what they were flying through. All he could do was speculate at this point. "What if...what if he wanted to rebuild the network--or at least one route? This aperture would be better than nothing--it'd at least give him a starting point."

Jimenez considered it. "Maybe. Getting it to open would at least put him inside subspace. If he could construct enough interspatial manifolds, the transwarp coil wouldn't have to hold the conduit open. He'd only need to use the coil to create another terminus."

"Another terminus where? I thought transwarp coils could only create apertures right in front of you."

"Right, because in regular space the normal laws of physics get in the way, and inside the conduit the coil is too busy holding the corridor open. But if Ledret managed to get inside a conduit and keep it from collapsing--all without using his coil--then he could theoretically create an endpoint..."--he realized what he was saying--"...anywhere he wanted."

"Like Cardassia." Kreighen concluded. Then a worse thought crossed his mind. "Why hasn't the Collective figured this out?"

"For all I know, Commander, they did, and they've already determined it won't work. Just because I can guess that you'd need to erect interspatial manifolds doesn't mean I have a clue how to do it. They wouldn't get started on something like this until they had all the details worked out."

"But Ledret isn't so patient." Kreighen stared at the monitor, focusing on the site of the abandoned aperture. "And if he gets this thing working, he'll have handed the Borg a gift-wrapped shortcut to the Federation's back door."


	19. Chapter 19

Ajax calculated at least a dozen ways he could overcome the two drones leading him into the Pit, but he offered no resistance. He still didn't know what Ledret wanted with Ijhel, and until that could be determined he had to assume her programming skills were of value to the Cardassian man. Since Ajax himself was Ijhel's primary field of study, it was entirely possible that she was only being kept alive to manipulate his program. He had to avoid getting himself destroyed, then, for her sake.

Captain Aelarin awaited him in the chamber, holding Ijhel's workstation. She spoke with her voice, but Ledret's words. "Computer, interface with Military Assault Hologram and disengage motor functions." 

Ajax found that he was immediately immobilized; he had expected as much. "I take it she's cooperating with you," he said casually.

"Most eagerly," Ledret answered. "However, she does hold you in high regard. I hope, for her sake, that I will not have to ask her to provide greater access to your systems."

"Even Doctor Ijhel would need days to access the data in my protected memory," the hologram explained. "There's no clever shortcut because anyone who would need one would also have authorization to just ask me."

"Starfleet assigned you to this vessel," Ledret reasoned. "Aelarin is officially in command. What you are hearing now is the voice of your superior officer, ordering you to provide direct answers to my questions."

Ajax smirked. "I wasn't compiled yesterday, Glinn."

"I could kill her," he suggested, referring to Ijhel. "She is quite pliant in my hands; I could probably even convince her that it's for the best."

"Eliminating your best bargaining chip won't get you anywhere."

Ledret's wolfish smile looked out of place on Aelarin's features. "You are indeed well designed, Mister Ajax. You're a credit to _all_ of your progenitors, including Utana. I wonder if you can engage in philosophy if it is disguised as a tactical assessment. Tell me, what do you suppose is the difference between the Cardassians and the Borg?"

"Certainly not in their respective reputations for the humane treatment of prisoners..."

"Amusing," Ledret huffed. "I've been considering it for some time, and I suspect that to the Federation, the distinction is as slim as you have just implied. We both cherish order over self-determination, and we impose our brand of order through military power. Of course, to a Cardassian the difference is obvious."

Ajax rolled his eyes. "Enlighten me."

"Imagination, my good sergeant! Cardassia prizes the creativity of its citizens and its subjects. The Borg could never appreciate this concept. Are you familiar with the underlying technology of their transwarp network?"

The soldier suddenly had nothing to say.

"Spare me your stoicism," Ledret frowned. "The question is rhetorical. No, I'm certain you have a basic grasp of the subject, since your Alliance duplicated the Borg's principles to transport its invasion fleet to this region. What you may not realize is that the Collective itself had so little understanding of its own interquadrant transit system. You see, they appropriated it decades ago, but were unable to assimilate it. To this day, they cannot create a stable, self-sustaining transwarp conduit; that's why they guarded the network so fervently prior to its demise, and why they have not attempted to reconstruct it since then.

"I, however, do not share their dilemma. Sixteen years ago, when I was assimilated, I entered the dreaming world that would become Unimatrix Zero, and met a Fen Domar scientist named Ngair Plotep. He was a brilliant theoretician, and during his time in the virtual construct he concocted elaborate theories about transwarp, with little more than his talent for lateral thinking. The Borg never knew any of this, however--his waking mind had no knowledge of these theories for them to read. Eventually he was killed in the war with Species 8472, and his secrets were lost to the Collective forever. But _I_ studied under him, and memorized the concepts he envisioned. _I_ can rebuild the conduit the Borg have abandoned, because _I_ had the inspiration to listen to an eccentric genius prattle on in the hopes he might reveal something useful.

"So you see, that is the difference between Cardassians and Borg. If my people had discovered the transwarp network before the Collective, _we_ would have developed not only the means to maintain it but also the skills to recover from a Starfleet attack upon it. And that is why it is _us_ whom Starfleet should fear, not them."

"Then it sounds as though you have everything you need," Ajax replied, unimpressed by the Cardassian's speech.

"Very nearly so," Ledret amended. "But I have been planning this for over eight years, and I have a particular item of business that must be attended to before all else. And for that, I need access to the star charts in your protected memory."

Ajax was resolute. "Then we have nothing further to discuss."

Ledret chided him. "You haven't been listening. The Borg would attempt to take the information from you by assimilating your holo-emitter. I know better; Starfleet most likely designed the emitter to self-destruct if compromised." He paused and gestured to the body that served as his representative. "You may recall that Captan Aelarin is a Lokirrim, and as such harbors deep resentment towards all photonic beings. You may also recall that it was at my insistence that she transferred to this sphere."

"I..." The hologram was all but hardcoded to keep hid stiff upper lip, but inwardly he began to lose his resolve. "I was beginning to notice a pattern..."

"I am in full control of her," Ledret continued. "Every action her body takes is at my discretion. But she is not dead, and she is not unaware of her predicament. I can hear her. She is furious with me, and knowing that I am describing the horror she experiences simply angers her further. There is nothing she can do against her oppressor; I may as well be the Collective itself. But unlike the Borg, I do not intend to exploit her solely for menial tasks. I allow her to imagine, and I become aware of her imaginings, to use for my own purposes. Do you know what Lokirrim captains dream of, Sergeant?"

"I would imagine this one dreams of strangling you," Ajax quipped.

"Oh yes," he chuckled, "she does at that. It's quite amusing to me, in fact. But Aelarin is a pragmatic woman. She knows she cannot harm me...but she can harm _you_ , through me." With that, Ledret entered a set of commands into Ijhel's workstation. 

Ajax twitched. "Wwwwwh---wwhaaaaat'sssss--?"

"I've inserted several unterminated iteration statements into your most superficial output interfaces," Ledret boasted. "Your compiler is designed to recognize these loops after several million repetitions, and automatically break them, but not before each process is slowed considerably." He watched with some pleasure as Ajax struggled to so much as blink. "The Lokirrim have determined that, for a photonic, this is a reasonable approximation for discomfort. On the other hand, I am assured that _this_ equivocates to pain."

Ledret entered another sequence, and Ajax visibly flinched. "I've moved several key files in your matrix, although your program is unable to recognize this change and continues to attempt to access them in their original locations. Perhaps it would be appropriate to compare this to severing an artery--the body tries nevertheless to pump blood through a connection that no longer exists, exacerbating the damage. I'm afraid I lack the necessary frame of reference to hold an informed opinion. What do you think?"

From the neck down, Ajax remained immobilized, but his face shivered as he tried to respond. "--jllll sevsevseven alphhhha, thrthreethree be-be-beta...zzzeeero sssix fourfour vvvvictorrrr hhhhhotel fivvvve jlljlljuliet sevsevennn zerozerozero brrrrrraaaavoooo..."


	20. Chapter 20

Once Commander Kreighen knew where the _Exsecuturus_ was going, tracking the elusive sphere was unnecessary. The _Hrunting_ had by now warped ahead to the site of the abandoned transwarp aperture, where it laid in wait. There was little chance of detection--whereas the shuttle had limited ability to overcome the sphere's multi-adaptive shielding, the sphere had no means whatsoever of defeating the shuttle's cloaking device. _Hrunting_ 's crew cooled its heels, awaiting the coming battle.

"Maybe we could destroy the aperture somehow," Jimenez suggested. "At this point it's not much more than a subspace distortion--I could probably smooth it out with a tetryon beam."

Kreighen rejected the suggestion. "Ledret will just find another one, and we might not beat him to it next time. We have to stop him here."

"We've got a complement of ten hollow torpedoes," Tirava reminded him. "Recommend we fire them in our opening salvo."

The commander mulled it over. Each hollow torpedo was designed to deploy a hologram--an instance of Ajax's matrix--into an enemy vessel. They'd proven invaluable in their first mission against a heavily damaged Borg cube. But this time... "No," he replied. "They work against the Collective because Borg drones underestimate them; Ledret won't. Besides, he's got Ajax and Ijhel...he may know more about them than we do at this point."

"Then you believe Ijhel has defected," Tirava concluded.

"I didn't say that," Kreighen snapped.

"But you believe it's possible," she pressed. "What happens if we go to all this trouble to rescue her, and she's switched sides?"

"Either way she's a part of this crew," he answered. "If she's betrayed us, she has to answer for it. I gave you a chance to object to this mission, Tirava--"

"I just want to make sure I know what the mission is, Commander."

"You know what it is.  We have to stop Ledret from building a bridge from Borg space to the Alpha Quadrant!"

" _You_ wanted to build that bridge three weeks ago!" she thundered. "If you'd gotten away with it, you'd have saved Ledret some trouble. So I find it convenient that you don't want to eliminate the aperture or use any real tactical advantage we might have against the _Exsecuturus_."

Confronted with his hypocrisy, Kreighen turned away from Tirava. He found himself looking at Jimenez. "She does has a point, sir," was all the ensign said.

Kreighen seethed. He tried to formulate a counterargument, or any kind of defense of his actions, but none came to him. "You're out of line, Lieutenant."

"Out of line?" she scoffed. "My family's been in Starfleet for seven generations, so I've done my best to respect your authority.  But in the end it's nothing but commander's pips on an empty uniform. You've misled this crew before and I have a duty to keep you from doing it again--"

"I did what I had to do to try to save lives!" Kreighen shouted over her. "I did everything I could to keep you out of it, and I failed, all right? Every damned day, you hold it over my head and beat me with it, and I take it. But right now I don't have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself, because I've got to try to save lives again." He strode over to her station, leaning right into her face. "If you don't like my orders, that's too bad. If that offends your sense of honor, then kill me and get it over with."

Tirava lowered her antennae and sneered. "You should choose your words more carefully, pink--"

"Both of you, _shut up_!" They turned to find Jimenez scrambling at ops. "Long-range sensors detect a subspace disturbance coming out of the nearest nebula!"

"Get a polaron scan on it," Kreighen told Tirava before returning to the pilot's seat. "It's got to be our Cardassian."

Tirava struggled to do anything but murder him, but she knew her duty. "It's consistent with previous scans," she announced. "Now entering visual range..."

Kreighen put the readings on the main viewscreen. But instead of a Borg sphere, he found only a small object hurtling through space. Confused, he magnified the image, revealing what appeared to be a jury-rigged torpedo. "Don't tell me that's what we've been tracking this whole time..."

"It's been modified with a propulsion system, multi-adaptive shielding, and just enough phony energy emissions to fool our scans." Jimenez confirmed. "Everything's designed to look just like the _Exsecuturus_ on long range sensors."

Kreighen cursed himself for not expecting misdirection from a Cardassian. Ledret knew they'd try to follow him, he knew they'd figure out where he was going, and he knew he could locate a cloaked shuttle if he could trick it into performing a polaron scan on a decoy. "Prepare to do a full sensor sweep," he ordered as he eased the shuttle into motion. "Now that he's had his fun he's bound to show up--"

The _Hrunting_ unexpectedly shook under the shearing forces of a tractor beam. "It's him!" Tirava reported. "Bearing one seven four mark two three six!"

"Disengage cloak and raise shields!" Kreighen accelerated to full impulse, trying in vain to escape the tractor. The shields loosened Ledret's grip, but not enough to break free.  The Cardassian had them dead to rights.

Jimenez struggled to stay in his chair. "The sphere's emitting a tachyon pulse...something's happening to the aperture..."

"Tirava, fire dissipators on that tractor beam!" Kreighen commanded.

"But he's opening the--"

" _Do it!_ "

The dissipator bursts screamed out of the _Hrunting_ , colliding with the _Exsecuturus_ and spreading across its hull. The tractor beam flickered and weakened, but it stubbornly refused to shut down.

Kreighen tried shaking loose with the maneuvering thrusters. "Put everything into the shields! Except propulsion--I need that to shake us loose! Cut life support if you have to--"

He nearly hit his head against his console when the shuttle suddenly broke free of the tractor beam and began to hurtle out of control through space. But Kreighen was a veteran pilot, and it wasn't the first time he'd gone ass over teakettle. Straining against the g-forces, he grasped the helm and managed to regain attitude control. "Report!"

"Minor damage to the hull," Tirava answered. "Shields are down to forty-six percent. The _Exsecuturus_ is moving off..." 

"The aperture's field magnitude has increased to 2.8 teracochranes," Jimenez added. "It's open, Commander. They'll enter it in three...two...one..." On cue, the sphere seemed to be swallowed into a glowing rupture in the space-time continuum.

Kreighen watched it go in without comment. He knew what Tirava would think. It didn't matter. "Get to work on the shields, Ensign.  I'm taking us in."


	21. Chapter 21

It wasn't that the rules of normal warp flight were absent from a transwarp physics; it was more accurate to say the same rules were distorted and stretched thin. Reopening the derelict transwarp aperture was like unlocking a door laying on the ground. Entering it was like tunneling into that ground with a pickaxe. Keeping the tunnel from collapsing around you was like constructing support pillars around you as along the way. The challenge was setting up those pillars while traveling 10 trillion kilometers per second. Starfleet's Yeager Project had needed years of study to even attempt such an engineering feat. Glinn Ledret was accomplishing it on his first try.

"You see," he gloated from the bridge of his sphere, "The fabric of subspace is uniform, making it soft and smooth. By its nature it resists the entrance of a foreign body, so to enter we must coax it open with the siren song of tachyon pulses. Once inside, we are in constant motion as the matter around us seeks to either expel or crush the invader. Like all natural resources, it must be brought to order before it can be made to serve us. The interpsatial manifolds might then be seen as yokes holding it in place, shaping it into the form we desire, the better to fulfill our needs."

Ijhel watched him carefully. "I had no idea," she replied.

"As each manifold is put in place, it becomes critical to the structure of the conduit," Ledret continued. "Remove one and the entire corridor collapses. Space them too far apart, and the corridor collapses. Since I have but one ship at my disposal, each manifold must be manufactured, deployed, and assembled as we travel through the very conduit we are rebuilding. You can see, then, why circumstances forced me to impose my mind upon the crew. I had no time to persuade them, and no margin for error. Even with seventeen hundred bodies under my direct control, it will be difficult to reach our destination." 

"I wouldn't have thought you capable of admitting difficulty, Kerim."

Ledret stepped away from his viewscreen, and toward his companion. "My dear, I am always prepared to show humility," he said. "Am I to blame if the galaxy rarely affords me the opportunity to do so?" He raised his hand, extending his fingers toward her hair.

Ijhel clasped her hands around his wrist, intercepting the gesture. "Then I presume you encountered no such difficulty interrogating my hologram."

His expression hardened, and he withdrew his hand. "Mister Ajax has...not been forthcoming. It is a setback, and since I have taken full control of this ship I am forced to take full responsibility. You must understand, my inherent compassion for all life has left me at a disadvantage when it comes to interrogation techniques."

"Of course."

"Perhaps you can assist me," he suggested. "Thus far it has done nothing but recite a series of characters with no apparent pattern." He interfaced with his console, displaying the sequence for her benefit. "Even with the full resources of this ship and its crew at my disposal, I cannot understand this gibberish."

"Perhaps there's nothing to understand," Ijhel offered. "If you've damaged his matrix, it's possible he's incapable of saying anything _except_ literal gibberish."

"Possibly," Ledret conceded. "All the more reason you should investigate. If you'd like I can customize one of the consoles to your needs..."

"That...won't be necessary. The workstation I left in the Pit is my tool of choice. It's best that I carry out my diagnostics where I can directly observe Ajax's behavior." She turned to go there, but then looked back. "And I work best alone."

"Come now, Utana," he demurred, "you know I cannot allow that. Ajax is far too dangerous, particularly with Kreighen's shuttle in pursuit..."

She began to argue, but saw no use in it. Ijhel took his hand again, running her finger along his palm. "Whatever the danger, Kerim, I trust you to watch over me. Certainly, I trust you to carry me across the galaxy in a stolen Borg sphere and to restore our people. Is it too much to ask that you trust me to know how to handle my own hologram?"

Ledret's chest seemed to rise under his exo-plating. "Not at all," he relented. "The Pit is yours to do with as you wish. I will have Aelarin stand guard nearby; if you need me, I will not be far."

Ijhel looked into his eyes. "You don't know how much reassurance that gives me, Kerim."

***

From the cockpit of the _Hrunting_ , Commander Kreighen watched as the scaffolding of interspatial manifolds flew out of the _Exsecuturus_ and assembled against the walls of the conduit. "You were right, Ensign," he muttered. "He's figured out how to keep the tunnel open. All he has to do now is dig his way to Cardassia."

"It's amazing," Jimenez commented, awestruck. "Each of Starfleet's conduits took weeks to build, with a whole squadron of shuttles. How's he doing it?"

Tirava was far less impressed. "The real question is, how do we destroy them?"

"That's not a problem," Jimenez answered. "We'd only have to take out one of them; that'd trigger a cascade collapsing the whole conduit. I'm more concerned about how to do that _without_ bringing the whole thing down on top of us."

Kreighen recalled his history. "When _Voyager_ took out the transwarp network from the inside, they made it out by staying ahead of the shockwave."

"Yeah, but the shockwave was chasing them in the direction they wanted to go," Jimenez countered. "If we start the cascade behind us, that might prevent anyone else from using the conduit, but it won't keep Ledret from reaching--wait..."

"From reaching the Alpha Quadrant," Tirava growled, her gaze locked on Kreighen. "Just as he planned."

"Stow that talk," the commander chided her. "There's got to be another way, and we're going to find it. Ensign, what's the status on our shields?"

"We...we've got bigger problems that that, Commander."

"Jimenez?" Kreighen turned to find him stunned into silence. "Report, Ensign!"

"Sir...sensors have just completed a gravimetric calculation of our heading. Ledret...isn't going to Cardassia. He's headed for the Gamma Quadrant."


	22. Chapter 22

The _Exsecuturus_ was so massive that, even with a crew of over a thousand, many decks were completely deserted. Despite this, every time Ijhel turned a corner on her way from the bridge to the Pit, she was greeted by one of Ledret's drones, every one of them leering at her with his self-assured grin. He was effectively everywhere; even if there were someone else aboard free of his control, that person would most likely be surrounded by four of his thralls. Nevertheless, the glinn lived up to his promise. When Ijhel reached the Pit, Aelarin was standing outside, affording her the privacy she had insisted upon.

She found Ajax immobilized, his face contorted in pain (insofar as holograms could feel such sensations). The sight of him made her blood run cold, and she quickly turned away in fear that he might make eye contact. She hurried to her familiar workstation, and set about interpreting the cryptic statements Ledret had reported.

Pattern analysis was second nature to her. Ijhel's keen mind raced through the series of numbers and letters, trying to comprehend their meaning. A feeling of dread began to creep over her as she contemplated Ajax staring at her from behind, pushing her to work more quickly. Her haste impeded her progress; concentration became impossible. Finally, she slammed her hands against the worktable and looked up from her computer.

"I don't know why you're blaming me," she said, addressing no particular person. "You're not programmed to be capable of suffering. If anything I designed you to be _more_ inured to it."

No one responded.

She rubbed her temples, trying to focus on making sense of the data on the screen. "I had to give him access," she insisted. "What do you suppose he would have done to me if I hadn't?"

No answer.

"Really," she continued, "you had no right to expect anything else. I'm not Starfleet. I'm not human. I don't look at you and mistake you for a flesh-and-blood person! Even if you were one, it'd make no difference. Look what Ledret did to everyone on this ship! We Cardassians, we're all the butchers of the galaxy! And you--you might as well be the Federation Charter, made manifest in one self-righteous human soldier! When you think about it, it's astonishing we weren't turned against one another weeks ago."

Silence.

Her rage overcame her fear and she spun around to challenge him. "I refuse to endure this! I don't know if Ledret did something to your vocal interfaces, but that's no excuse!" She entered a series of commands on her station. "There, nothing to stop you. Now just try and defend yourself!"

Ajax's eyes trembled as he looked at her.

"Damn you, why won't you _say_ anything!?"

"Ijhel-seven-alpha. Mark three revision beta. Zero six four victor hotel five juliet seven zero bravo papa niner niner whiskey oscar."

It was the first time he'd been able to properly enunciate the words since Ledret's interrogation began. Upon hearing the string spoken aloud, Ijhel suddenly recognized its meaning: The file name, revision, and Federation identification code of his program. Name, rank, serial number. 

Ijhel knew that Ajax was hardcoded to comply with the terms of the Seldonis IV Convention: Prisoners of war were only obliged to provide this most basic information. And yet it had simply never occurred to her that he would repeatedly state this data with the same willful defiance of a human in a Cardassian prison camp.

She stared back at him for what felt like hours, before summoning the courage to act. Returning to her workstation, she began to write and execute dozens of functions. Ijhel looked towards him one last time before deactivating him. Ajax shimmered into nothingness, his mobile emitter falling unceremoniously to the ground. She ran over to fetch the small sphere, clutching it near to her as she whispered. "I'm...I'll make it right. Believe me."

***

"That can't be right," Kreighen shuddered. "Check it again."

Jimenez re-analyzed the _Hrunting_ 's sensor data manually, but came up with the same answer. "Confirmed. This transwarp conduit is pointed at the Gamma Quadrant. In about fifteen hours we'll be in the Obatta Cluster, on the edge of Dominion space."

"It makes no sense!" Tirava fumed. "What business would Ledret there?"

"Revenge," Kreighen answered under his breath. "Cardassia sided with the Dominion in the war, and took the brunt of their losses. Besides, if he has any sense he realizes the peace between the Dominion and the Alpha Quadrant is fragile. If the Founders sense a new threat from the Federation, they won't hesitate to invade again."

Tirava wasn't convinced. "How would a Cardassian flying a Borg sphere be interpreted as a Federation threat?"

Kreighen shook his head. "Ledret would be identified as a member of Unimatrix Zero, a faction more or less aligned with the Federation in its war with the Borg--a faction _created_ through the intervention of a Federation starship. If nothing else, they'll find out this Federation shuttle was following Ledret and make the connection that way. The Founders barely assume the Federation acts on good faith to begin with--it wouldn't take much to set them off."

"Then there's no room for debate," she reasoned. "We have to destroy this conduit immediately."

"There never _was_ a debate," the commander insisted. "Although I wish it didn't have to come to this to make you see that."

The Andorian woman began to quarrel with him again, until she saw a bizarre reading at her station. "Incoming transmission," she announced, "...from the _Exsecuturus_."

Kreighen allowed himself half a smile--he didn't dare raise his hopes any higher until he was sure. "Onscreen."

The image flickered and stretched across the viewer, but the face was unmistakable. " _Hrunting_ , this is Doctor Ijhel. I think it's time we discussed our mutual problem."


	23. Chapter 23

"I'll keep this brief, Commander," Ijhel said over the commlink. "I need to get off of this ship."

"We're working on it," Kreighen replied. "But the top priority is to stop Ledret before he reaches Dominion space."

"Domin--" Terror filled her eyes at the mention of the word. "Then that's why he was interrogating Ajax."

"Probably," Kreighen acknowledged. "Starfleet obtained the coordinates of the Founders' homeworld at the end of the war. We have to force the _Exsecuturus_ back into normal space and destroy the transwarp conduit. If you could help us from the inside--"

"You can't trust her, Commander." Tirava had left her station and stepped into Ijhel's field of view. "If you tell her anything it'll get back to Ledret."

Ijhel rolled her eyes. "Of course, Lieutenant. I'm sure you can tell that a Cardassian is lying whenever her lips move. I can assure you all, I am fully capable of sending out a transmission behind Ledret's back."

"Cardassians are even better known for their overconfidence than their deceptiveness," Tirava shot back. Her antennae flexed up and down, as if performing an insulting gesture.

Kreighen glanced back and forth between the two women, weighing their words. "Look...I hear you both. But we don't have a lot of options. All we can do is try to catch Ledret by surprise. Doctor, anything you can do to distract him will be a big help."

"I'm way ahead of you, Commander," Ijhel answered. "Is there a particular plan of attack that you have in mind? No offense, but a single shuttle against a Borg sphere doesn't fill me with confidence."

"Ledret isn't the Collective," Kreighen explained. "The tactics will have to be completely different. He's a Cardassian who hasn't engaged a Federation crew since..." As he trailed off, he swung around to Tirava. "Since about the same time _you_ last engaged the Cardassians."

"What are you getting at?" Tirava asked.

"You and Ledret are both twenty years out of the loop--you both studied tactics during the Cardassian border wars. You'll know better than anyone how he'll think in a fight. We can use that."

Her antennae twitched as she mulled it over. "Yes...that might work. Cardassians fight like predators--they rarely ignore an enemy, even one who poses little threat to them, and they play with their food. If you can keep us away from his weapons, I may be able to do enough damage to irritate him. Then we'll give him an opportunity to tractor us into the main assimilation bay. From there I can flood the interior of the sphere with trilithium resin."

"Trilithium resin?" Jimenez questioned.

"The Cardassians used it to poison our colonies along their border," she explained. "Our engines are too small to produce very much of it, but a few kilograms ought to be enough to contaminate the air inside the sphere."

Kreighen nodded in assent. "It's a good plan, but I'll like it a lot more if we don't have to hope Ledret plays his part." He turned back to the viewscreen. "Doctor, if you can get the bay doors open, we'll handle the rest."

"Just make sure you beam me into the shuttle before you use this...resin of yours," she reminded him. "I'm sure Tirava is quite familiar with Cardassian bioweapons, but I've personally made a habit of avoiding the subject. Ijhel out."

The viewscreen cut to black, and Kreighen returned his attention to his crew. "Good job, Tirava. That was quick thinking."

"Well, I know Cardassians," the Andorian replied. "And I'm still not sure we can trust her."

"We don't have much choice," he countered, "and even if we did, the plan wouldn't change."

Jimenez raised his objection. "We're talking about killing everybody aboard the sphere, right? Ledret's the only one who's a threat--what about Sorgem and Two and the others?"

"I don't want anybody to die," Kreighen told the ensign. "But Ledret is looking to plunge the whole galaxy into war. I'll destroy the sphere before I let that happen. And if I have to, I'll destroy the _Hrunting_."


	24. Chapter 24

The _Hrunting_ had spent its first forty-five minutes in the transwarp conduit safely out of weapons range of the _Exsecuturus_. Now it had to get close enough to keep the sphere from getting a clear shot. The hard part was closing that gap.

Kreighen accelerated to one-half impulse and implemented an evasive pattern. It proved necessary--the sphere immediately opened fire with torpedo spreads. A near miss rattled the _Hrunting_ 's shields and forced him to fall back. "Damn!" he muttered. "How long has it been since he erected one of those manifolds?"

"Coming up on six minutes," Jimenez reported.

"Good...he won't fire while the next one's assembling. Prepare to cloak on my mark."

Seconds later, segments of the latest interspatial manifold emerged from the sphere's aft hull. As they floated through the ether, their thrusters manuevering them into position for assembly, Kreighen made his move. With the cloak activated for good measure, the _Hrunting_ weaved around the flotsam. But it would take more than invisibility to stay Ledret's hand. The moment the manifold was safely out of range, the _Exsecuturus_ began firing blind, hoping to catch the shuttle in a barrage of forced plasma beams.

"Six hundred meters and closing!" Tirava shouted over the sound of a lucky shot grazing the starboard hull.

"Drop the cloak and raise shields!" Kreighen ordered.

"But we're still in his weapons range!" Tirava protested.

"Do it!" Kreighen punched it to full impulse, quickly bringing the shuttle within fifty meters of a head-on collision. At the last possible moment, he leveled off with nothing but the ventral shields to keep the ship from grinding into the Borg hull. After several tense seconds, he finally settled into a smooth strafing run along the curvature of the sphere.

"We're in position," he told Tirava. "Let's see if you can bite him enough to make him scratch."

Tirava nodded and blasted Ledret's ship with the polaron cannons. The weapons had been introduced to the Federation during the Dominion War, and had proven most effective against the Borg. But the _Exsecuturus_ was at best a secondhand Borg vessel; without the resources of the Collective, it was far more vulnerable to unfamiliar ordnance. Massive explosions ripped out of the surface of the the sphere, threatening to consume the _Hrunting_ itself at such close range.

"Easy!" Kreighen warned her. "If we piss him off too much, he'll skip scratching and go straight for the elephant gun!" He looked over his other shoulder. "Ensign, can you get a lock on Ijhel?"

"Too much interference," Jimenez answered. "Every time we shoot them at pointblank range it throws a wall of static at the sensors. I'm not sure I could find her under ideal conditions, Commander--"

"Then look for Ajax," Kreighen interrupted.

"Sir?"

"She's preparing to get beamed off that basketball, so she'll be keeping him close by."

Jimenez looked about as confused as Tirava had been about the elephant gun line. "He's not exactly irreplaceable equipment..." 

"Trust me." Kreighen felt the shuttle rattle against one of Tirava's blasts, and his attention snapped back to his piloting. "She may even be trying to send a beacon with his emitter! Keep trying!"

"I think we're getting his attention," Tirava observed. "Reading three tractor beams attempting to triangulate on our position."

"We're ten meters away," the commander quipped. "He'd lock those beams onto his own stern before he could grab us."

Tirava smiled, with a hint of pride in her antennae. "I'd say he's sufficiently irritated."

He shook his head. "Close, but not enough. I don't want him to think of holding us at arm's length so he can pick us off with a torpedo. He's got to want to swallow us up so he can pull off our wings. Try to target his bridge. I doubt a quantum torpedo can penetrate that deep, but I bet it can give him a headache."

"Get me in range," the Andorian gloated, her skin bluing with bloodlust, "and I'll give him a concussion." 


	25. Chapter 25

Once Ijhel concluded her secret communique with the _Hrunting_ , she immediately began working on her next task. Opening a docking bay could be accomplished from any part of a Borg vessel due to its decentralized design, but her instincts told her that it would be preferable to do the work from just outside the bay itself. The less distance her commands had to travel across the ship to reach the bay doors, the less likely the signal would be intercepted by Ledret.

Getting to the assimilation bay would pose a greater challenge. Ordinarily dispatching with the guard outside the door without attracting attention would be simple enough. But although the woman standing outside the Pit appeared to be Aelarin, it was effectively an extension of Ledret. Indeed, every path Ijhel could take was undoubtedly crawling with Borg, and the Cardassian glinn saw through all of their eyes. The instant any of them observed that she had left the Pit with Ajax's holo-emitter, Ledret would know about it.

She considered the option of reactivating Ajax, and allowing him to create the diversion she needed. But no, she was unwilling to take that risk. Her devotion to perfecting the program demanded that she properly examine the damage Ledret had done to Ajax before bringing him back online. Surely that was all there was to it, she assured herself. Regardless, dispatching Ajax was out of the question...although Ledret didn't need to know that.

Giving the performance of her life, she screamed. "What are you doing? Don't! Kerim! Help me, Kerim!"

Aelarin predictably responded, albeit a hair slower than expected. Perhaps establishing the transwarp conduit, plotting a new war with the Dominion, and fending off the _Hrunting_ had divided Ledret's attention in too many directions. "What is it, Utana? Where is the hologram?"

She rushed to "his" side, gasping for breath. "It's my fault, Kerim...he manipulated me with his Starfleet psychobabble... Please, be careful! He's regained the ability to adjust his appearance--he's virtually invisible now..."

"He won't get far," Ledret said through Aelarin's lips. "Rest assured, I will make him--"

Ijhel was no engineer, but even she could hazard a guess that the conspicuous black tubes at the base of Aelarin's skull served a vital purpose, and that tearing them out would cause critical damage to the drone. The Lokirrim woman shuddered and collapsed without further comment, implying that Ledret would receive no meaningful information about the attack. With luck, he would infer that Ajax had invisibly overwhelmed him.

There was no time for Ijhel to congratulate herself--she had to flee from the Pit before Ledret willed reinforcements toward Aelarin's position. She shot out the door, never looking back as she hurried to the lift that would take her to the assimilation bay. 

The lift was slow and inefficient; the Collective was hardly interested in which drones were working on which decks, and afforded the system little importance in their ship designs. Ijhel was practically pacing on the small platform carrying her through the sphere, eager to get back into a corridor, where her fate would be decided by her own speed. From her vantage she saw no drones moving toward her, but she couldn't fool herself. From the bridge, Ledret would discover the use of the lift, and he would know none of "himselves" were utilizing it.

When she finally reached Deck 72, she practically leaped out of the lift, her adrenaline racing. She sprinted nearly a hundred meters down the corridor before she finally made eye contact with a drone. Contact was unmistakable--the moment it saw her, its expression contorted into a mixture of Ledret's wry suspicion and self-righteous fury. 

Ijhel nearly froze up. Unlike Ledret and her shipmates on the _Hrunting_ , she had no military training, and the Cardassian Science Ministry had seen little need to temper her nerve in combat. Even so, she thought of Ajax defending her from the drones only hours ago, and was inspired to press on. Instead of seeking an alternative route, she dashed headlong toward the drone, surprising Ledret as she weaved around it before it could react.

The exhilaration of confounding the megalomaniac took her all the way to the end of the corridor, where she was met by a perpendicular walkway bound in by a simple railing. To the left she heard Borg servomotors wheezing in the distance. To the right she saw the crimson lasers of their ocular implants. And before her was one of the vast empty chasms that seemed to permeate the bulk of the sphere.

In her mind's eye, Ijhel pictured what she would want to happen...what she might program Ajax to do. That was a far cry from attempting it herself, however. She lacked Tirava's--or even Kreighen's--athletic ability, and would not normally dare pretend otherwise. But as the drones closed in on her, and she imagined Ledret's outrage at her betrayal, she discovered that her rational thoughts were quickly subsiding to pure instinct. Ijhel flung herself toward the railing, grasping it in her hands as she vaulted over it and into the Borg abyss.

Her intent was to swing around and try to land on Deck 73. But before she could either complete her gymnastic feat or fall to her death, shimmering energy enveloped her body in mid-air. Ijhel felt the familiar sensation of matter-energy transport spirit her away, never to return to the gathering throng of drones.

She hoped to find herself in the bright, chilly atmosphere of the _Hrunting_. Instead she rematerialized on the bridge of the _Exsecuturus_ , with no less than ten drones training their weapons on her head. Having completed her transport, Ledret calmly stepped away from his console and toward his prisoner. Instinct drove Ijhel to back away, but the drones around her offered no room to do so.

"My dear, dear Utana," Ledret clucked. "I cannot begin to express my disappointment."

"Kerim...I--I can explain," she fumbled, hoping at some small chance of maintaining his illusions.

"Don't insult us both," he sneered. "In any event, you needn't worry about opening the docking bay for your Federation friends. I will see to that in my own time." Her eyes filled with dread, much to his satisfaction. "Oh, I know what you told them. It would appear you are not as skilled with computers as you would choose to believe. Perhaps you should retreat to simpler tasks, like crafting your holographic daydreams."

He was by now within a quarter of a meter of her, smiling his sickening smile. Ijhel spat in his face.

"Really?" he chided, unconcerned with the saliva dripping from his cheek. "No witty riposte? I'd have expected better from a Klingon. I must admit...you were an amusing object for my more...fantastic visions of this mission, Utana, but it seems you're little better than Zosek. You'd rather subsist as a Federation peasant than live as a Cardassian patriot."

"There's nothing patriotic about this 'mission' of yours," she snarled. "Millions of Cardassians are going to suffer because you have to satisfy a petty vendetta against the Dominion! Even a Talarian wouldn't be so reckless!"

"You see things through the simple lens of a human," Ledret thundered. "This ship gives me all the power I need to destroy the Founders! Once I have done that, I will use the Bajoran wormhole to return to the Alpha Quadrant, with five thousand Jem'Hadar warships behind me! _I_ will lead them through the heart of the Federation--let them ravage my enemies for me, in anguish over their fallen 'gods'--until war is unavoidable. For all that it is an ostensible ally, Cardassia will be excused from the fight; the Federation would coddle us as surely as they once shielded the Bajorans! And while my people are kept safely out of the fray, _I_ will make my triumphant return, to rebuild our armies and wait for the proper moment to strike! Bajor will be spared--in the new order, they will be surrounded by an empire which ignores them into irrelevance. Yes, let them crow about their resistance against an enemy who cares not to occupy them. But Earth! Earth will know miseries Bajorans could scarcely imagine! And what's left of the Dominion will be made to see that where they failed, their former Cardassian lapdogs thrive!"

"You fumble at military strategy with a clumsy, unsophisticated hand, Ledret," Ijhel retorted. "One would think you'd mistaken the Alpha Quadrant for a woman."

Ledret's eyes bulged, and his shoulder twitched as though he were about to strike her. He thought better of it, however, and regained his composure. "Tell me, Doctor," he smiled. "Are you aware that the Borg worship a deity?"

"That's absurd."

"It is, perhaps, an inarticulate term for the concept they revere, but an apt one nonetheless. In the Collective, every drone is programmed to seek out and obtain perfection, and the embodiment of perfection is known as 'The One.' They don't know what The One is except that by increasing the perfection of the Collective, they may grow closer to it. Only then can they complete their ultimate directive. You see, the Borg exist for the sole purpose of identifying, locating, and assimilating God."

The reality of this crisis now fully reached Ijhel. "You think you're this 'One'?"

" _I_ am nothing! _Cardassia_ is the One! If you were anything more than a Federation strumpet you'd know that! The Borg are mindless automatons directed to find the perfect society and distribute it throughout the universe! Cardassia is a perfect society that has gone unappreciated by its neighbors! The fusion of these two forces will bring about a new order to the galaxy! The Collective obviously deduced this when they assimilated me! That is why _I_ am the one who will bring them under the heel of their true god, the Cardassian state! And when I am finished, Cardassia will be _Kerim Ledret_."

"You're mad," she whispered, belaboring the obvious.

Ledret's smile evaporated. "Hold her," he ordered. It was an unnecessary instruction; the drones heeded his wish the moment he conceived of it. Ijhel quickly found her arms held fast by two of his larger puppets; she struggled, fearing the worst, to no avail.

He glided toward her, closer than he had ever been before. As the fingers of his right hand made contact with her ear, Ledret shivered. She winced and pulled against his drones as he traced a path along the scaly, cartilaginous ridge leading to her delicate jaw. "In spite of it all," he murmured, "I see hope for you." 

Without warning thin cables shot out of his second and third metacarpals, piercing her carotid artery. She gasped, unable to prevent him from injecting millions of nanoprobes into her bloodstream. Ledret nearly broke into a cackle as he allowed his bionics to complete the task, and then finally retracted the tubules into his arm. The nanoprobes instantly sealed the twin entry wounds, but the damage was done. The drones released her and Ijhel fell to the ground, helpless to stop the technology swimming throughout her body. Capillaries in her face and hands began to darken into sinister webs across her skin.

"Resistance is futile," Ledret offered cheerfully as she looked up at him.  "You will adapt to service me."


	26. Chapter 26

Ijhel lay on the floor, convulsing as the Borg nanoprobes swarmed through her system. Starfleet had developed several anti-assimilation defenses, which she had received before her deployment and which were now aiding her immune system to fight off the foreign bodies. But the primary purpose of the anti-assimilants was to prevent an individual from becoming a drone; painlessness was a lower priority.

She wasn't sure if Ledret had done this to her simply to watch her suffer or because he truly believed he could assimilate her into his private hive mind. By now it wasn't even clear if Ledret knew what he was doing or why. He watched her struggle at his feet with a bizarre expression on his face--a mix of sadistic pleasure and childlike fascination with the torment he had caused. Ijhel attempted to sit up in defiance; instead she fell back to the deck plate, violently coughing until she spat out a thin black filament.

An alert signal sounded, and Ledret was distracted from his entertainment. He glanced to a drone, who immediately interfaced with the nearest console for a status report. Instantly, he was aware of his thrall's observation. "The _Hrunting_ has entered Assimilation Bay Three," he informed Ijhel. "No doubt they believe this to be your handiwork. I hope you are aware that you are to blame for their deaths."

She tried to speak, but her lungs were in revolt. "That's...not..."

"Oh, but it is," he assured her. "From what I overheard in your transmission, Kreighen intends to introduce trace amounts of trilithium resin into the atmosphere of this ship. I almost pity them their ignorance. If you'd studied history more closely, you could have warned them."

"I...thought I had..."

Ledret was now virtually aglow with smugness. "Tirava was right--during the border wars, we attacked Federation outposts with trilithium resin. It's a terrible way to die; they say it damages the nervous system, creating proteinaceous infections...or rather, it does so in some species. Curiously, trilithium resin has no effect upon Cardassians--that's _why_ we used it against the Federation, so that we could colonize the contaminated planets."

Ijhel shook her head weakly as he continued. "I haven't decided how they will pay for their insolence," he explained, "although I suppose it is only fitting to allow them to deploy the resin and live to see their masterstroke fail so utterly. Perhaps I shall beam them directly onto the bridge so that they can die at their own hands."

"You...you..." She planted her hands on the floor, pushing herself up in spite of the pain. When she made eye contact with Ledret, he realized that it wasn't despair he heard in her voice. It was derision. "You imbecile...I _did_ warn them."

"Perhaps you indulge the humans in their miserable card games, but you cannot 'bluff' me, Utana. I intercepted your communique with the _Hrunting_ , despite your best efforts."

"I didn't...say I made _any_...efforts," she rasped. "I told them I could--could contact them...without your knowledge." She held down the urge to vomit--she was determined to finish this. "I also told them I...was lying."

The look of confidence on Ledret's face gave way to one of confusion. He quickly rallied against his fears. "You're better than I give you credit for, Doctor. But if you had truly deceived me, you wouldn't notify me of it."

"You...told me about the resin..." she wheezed.

"Only once it was too..." Ledret raised his head as he sensed through his hive mind a series of explosions throughout the sphere. Based on the observations of his drones, he realized that the _Hrunting_ had used its transporters to beam antimatter, not trilithium, into the _Exsecuturus_. "Contain the damage!" he thundered to his drones, forgetting that spoken orders were necessary. "Secure the transwarp coil! And board the _Hrunting_ immediately!"

As the drones turned to exit the bridge, a transporter beam appeared behind them. Ledret saw it immediately, and instantly countermanded his orders. But the Borg were not known for their quick reaction time. The intruder's compression rifle fired a wide beam, easily stunning every drone in the room. Taking no chances, he switched to a rapid-fire pulse and picked off the wounded automatons one by one, until his sights were set squarely on the Cardassian rogue.

"You've got ten seconds to turn off whatever's letting you control the Zeroes," Commander Kreighen demanded, flaunting his weapon. "After that I start teaching myself Borg microsurgery."

Ledret looked like a petulant child whose mischief had been frustrated by an interfering parent. Then his smile returned, followed by a disturbing cackle. "You are adorable, my dear Commander. For a moment I allowed Ijhel to convince me you had an actual plan."

"I do," Kreighen answered. "Step one goes something like 'Pull trigger.'"

"I have seventeen hundred bodies, Commander," Ledret elaborated. "I have thirty-five hundred boots marching toward your position. I have roughly fifteen thousand fingers ready to strangle the life out of you. I am not controlling this hive mind...I _am_ the hive mind. I have transcended your small notions of life and death, Mister Kreighen. You cannot intimidate God."

Kreighen's grip on his weapon tightened, as his mind raced for a perfect comeback. None came to him.


	27. Chapter 27

"Tirava to Jimenez," the Andorian boomed over the commlink. "What's your status?"

"I just got down here, Lieutenant," the ensign responded. "You'll need to give me more time."

She peered out the windows surrounding the _Hrunting_ 's cockpit. Ledret's drones were filing into the assimilation bay by the dozens. "I wish I had some to spare. I'll try to hold our position but we'll need to get out of this sphere in a hurry!"

The Zeroes operating under Ledret's control lacked even the subtlety of the Borg Collective. They swarmed around the _Hrunting_ as if to tear the shuttle apart with their bare hands. As they began to shake the vessel Tirava realized their crude strategy might be successful; the mob continued to grow without end.

Acting quickly, she powered up the thrusters to lift the shuttle three meters off the ground, then raised shields to keep her enemies at a distance. That failed to discourage the drones who had managed to cling to the hull, inside of the shields. There was no delicate way to eliminate them; Tirava adjusted the emitters to narrow the deflector screens, squeezing Ledret's cybernetic slaves until their cranial exo-plating gave way to bursts of blood and bone. She briefly dropped the ventral shields, just long enough to allow the debris to drop to the ground.

The remaining attackers wasted no time in changing tactics, opening fire upon the _Hrunting_ with their arm-mounted plasma cannons. Tirava returned fire, cutting them down with the shuttle's phaser banks. But for every ten she killed, another twenty appeared to maintain the barrage against her shields. She toyed with the idea of using a torpedo, but in such close quarters she knew it would do more harm than good.

Not for the first time, she wondered what the hell Kreighen was doing.

***

"It seems my ten seconds have more than elapsed," Glinn Ledret announced on the wrong side of Kreighen's rifle. His drones quickly filled the bridge, surrounding the two men and the fallen Doctor Ijhel. "You may as well shoot me, Commander. It will be the only satisfaction you can take from this incursion."

"Then let's change the terms," Kreighen suggested. "I somehow doubt that a Cardassian hyper-nationalist wants to exist solely as the collective consciousness of a bunch of aliens from the Delta Quadrant. Your puppets aren't exactly quick on the draw, so it looks like I've got the face of your new order right in my sights."

"It takes a strong man to admit his faults," Ledret countered. "I'm capable of commending you for appealing to my vanity. Certainly your misdirection with the trilithium was unexpectedly brilliant--you knew I would become preoccupied with seizing upon your apparent error, and it's brought you this far. But if this body must die so that I may be rid of your interference, I accept that. I can just as easily rebuild Cardassia from Zosek's body...or perhaps Ijhel's. That's a curious possibility that requires more..." He seemed to lose his concentration. "Morrrrre..."

"More... _thought_ , Ledret?" Ijhel had by now crawled to Kreighen's feet, where she pulled herself up by his trouser leg. "I...tried to...tell you," she gasped.

Ledret shuddered; the drones around him began to break from formation and stumble about. "Youu..." he stammered. "Youuuuuu diiid somethinggggg..."

Ijhel's throat was raw, but she was determined to complete her statement. He had to learn his lesson. "I knew you'd...see my transmission to Kreighen because...because I _let_ you. How else could I implant...invasive program into...your imaging systems."

Kreighen had read about such programs being designed for anti-Borg tactics. "You mean the kind that trick Borg subroutines into considering a paradox until it gums up half their processing resources? But you'd have to design it to bypass their firewalls--"

"Child's play," she wheezed. "With respect...Comm'nder...knew you'd devise...rescue plan, but this was all to keep him busy...'til the program took effect. In...'nother six hundred comp'tational cycles...won't even be able to move."

Ledret struggled to make another bombastic tirade, but the implants that the Borg installed in his brain would not cooperate. "Utaaaana, doooon't doooo..."

"Alr'dy did," Ijhel smiled through her pain. "You were wrong...I'm _exactly_ as good a programmer as I believe..."

Ledret found himself uneasy on his feet, unable to keep his focus on anything. He still managed to point a threatening finger at Kreighen. "You stilllllll wooon't geeeeeet awayyyyyy!"

"To be honest, I wasn't expecting to." Kreighen lowered his rifle and reached down to help Ijhel to her feet. "I was just the diversion."

***

Although Unimatrix Zero had rewired the _Exsecuturus_ to have a centralized bridge, the sphere still retained much of its original Borg design. As with any vessel built by the Collective, every section was equally capable of operating the entire ship. Ensign Jimenez had beamed down to the lowest levels, as far from Ledret's notice as possible, to do just that.

In terms of flight control, Kreighen was the _Hrunting_ 's resident expert, but the plan called for few actual maneuvers. Upon hacking into the navigational subroutines, Jimenez adjusted the _Exsecuturus_ 's heading by a fraction of a degree, which would cause the sphere to eventually collide with the perimeter of the conduit. In five minutes, the sphere would be crushing itself to bits against the sides of the corridor--if it did make it to the Gamma Quadrant, it would do so in millions of tiny pieces.

"Ensignnnn..."

He swung around from the panel he was working on, nervously fumbling for his hand phaser. When he located the source of the voice, he found Two of Six dragging herself across the deckplate. His immediate concern was Ledret, although something in her voice...her eyes... "Is it really you?"

"Yyyyes..." she mumbled. "Sommmething wrrrrong withhh Llllledreeet...heee sennnnt...squuuuad tooo geeet youuuu. Otherssss diiiiidn't maaaake iit..."

"And you did?"

She winced, and then stared up at him. "Hooooped wwwwould be yyyyyou. Neeeed youuu to killllll meee."

He realized his phaser was still pointed at her, and quickly holstered it. "I...why? I mean, I can't..."

"Ledrrrrrret issstillll insiiiiide..." she garbled. "Caaaaan't fiiight himmm...daaaangerrr toooo yyyou..."

"That doesn't matter," he protested. "We'll stop Ledret, we'll get you off this ship...I was hoping I'd get a chance to save you..."

"Nnnnnn--Nathan." She summoned all of her dwindling faculties in one last effort. "When I...aaaasked to c-c-copulate with youuu. Yyyou refused. Ssocialll proootooocols. Not! Again? Iiiii...b-beg..."

Jimenez trembled as he watched her convulse in the dark corridor. He didn't know whether she wanted this to stop Ledret or to spare herself prolonged agony. He didn't know if there were better options. All he knew was that, for the second time, she had requested something of him--something important to her. And he couldn't refuse her this time. He raised his weapon, set it to maximum, and did as she asked. Two's suffering was over a fraction of a second later.

Solemnly, he tapped his commbadge. "Jimenez to _Hrunting_. Let's get the hell out of here."

***

Within minutes, the drones squirming around Kreighen and Ijhel were far less of a threat than the rumblings throughout the sphere. The commander had set aside his rifle to consult a computer console. "They've done it," he reported. "This ship is bouncing all over this conduit like a pinball--they'll both be destroyed any minute now."

Ledret was on his knees, doggedly refusing to allow the invasive program to deny him his dignity. "Nnnnever maaake iiiit...ouuuuuuuuuut..." he managed to say.

"I've been in tougher spots," he replied. "Although now that you mention it, I've learned not to take chances when it comes to Cardassians or Borg." With Ijhel leaning against his shoulder, he slapped his commbadge with his free arm. "Kreighen to Tirava--two to beam up."

With that, he lifted his rifle and pointed it at his defeated enemy. He fired an instant before his shuttle's transporter began to pull his molecules away. He would not witness the Cardassian's disintegration. Only Ledret himself would, through the eyes of his dying drones strewn about the bridge.

***

The moment Krieghen and Ijhel materialized in the aft section of the _Hrunting_ , he lifted the Cardassian woman into his arms and carried her to the shuttle's bio-bed. "Ajax?" he asked her.

She struggled for her pocket; Kreighen took the initiative and retrieved the emitter himself. "Computer, activate Ajax--field medic protocols!"

Sergeant Ajax materialized, this time with the crimson details of his uniform replaced with blue, and automatically began his predefined procedure before he caught sight of his patient. "Please state the nature of--what in blazes?"

"I think Ledret tried to assimilate her," Kreighen explained to him. "Do what you can--I've got to go fly this thing."

The commander hurried into the forward section of the shuttle, and was relieved to find Jimenez and Tirava accounted for. "Okay," he began as he took the helm from Tirava, "we'll need to get those bay doors opened again--"

"Commander..." Tirava tapped his shoulder and pointed to the enormous opening in the sphere's hull. "While I was waiting I took the liberty..."

He reached for Andorian and kissed her quickly. "You're beautiful," he told her as he settled into his chair. "Ensign, I need full impulse as soon as we're clear of the...uh, hole."

"Sir," Jimenez objected. "I assume you're taking us back the way we came?"

"That was the plan."

"Nobody has ever traveled against the, ah, 'current' of a transwarp conduit before," the engineer explained. "I don't even know if it can be done."

Kreighen let out a deep sigh. "Jimenez, they've never swum upstream in one of these things because they've never had a Borg sphere _and_ the Dominion downstream of them. If it can be done, I _guarantee_ it's gonna get done today."


	28. Chapter 28

"Swimming upstream" had turned out to be an apt analogy for trying to return to the entrance of the transwarp conduit. Matter was naturally pushed away from the distortion that created the aperture, much to the dismay of the _Hrunting_ 's impulse engines. Commander Kreighen's instruments said the shuttle was moving forward at full impulse, but his gut told him it was more like half that speed.

"The _Exsecuturus_ just collided with the conduit wall again," Tirava reported. "It'll be destroyed any minute."

"Are we far enough away from it?" Kreighen asked.

"It won't matter much, Commander," Jimenez told him. "The sphere stopped building interspatial manifolds eight minutes ago, and those are the only things holding the conduit up. The whole thing's about to collapse, and we can't outrun the cascade at this speed."

"Then we're not gonna get out the way we came in," the pilot decided. "How do we make a new transwarp aperture, Ensign?"

"We _don't_!" Jimenez scoffed. "We'd need a transwarp coil to even attempt it!"

Kreighen rolled his eyes. Engineers always preferred to describe the darkness than figure out how to build a candle. "Why? We didn't have one when we snuck _into_ this thing!"

"Because Ledret already opened it for us!"

"Look, I get why it's not easy to create these subspace distortions, but we've already _got_ one! We're _in_ it! Can't we distort it _more_ with our warp field or something?"

"That doesn't even make sense!" Jimenez insisted. "You can't _go_ to warp inside a _trans_ warp conduit--the field would--wait. We wouldn't have to _travel_ at warp...we could just create a static warp shell..."

Kreighen looked to him, starting to smile. "Yeeeeah...?"

"It could act a a subspace barrier, like the sides of the conduit! Instead of smashing against it like the _Exsecuturus_ , we could blend right in! Yes! We wouldn't be caught in the cave-in, we'd become part of the cave!"

Tirava interrupted his epiphany with an important question. "Would that put us back in normal space?"

"That or a tertirary subspace domain," Jimenez concluded. "But we wouldn't get blown up."

"Good enough!" Kreighen declared. "Get the warp engines ready, Ensign. I'll steer us toward the barrier..." He cut the port thrusters and allowed the shuttle to veer off center, careful to approach the edge without actually contacting it. 

"Keep us steady," Jimenez advised. "Initiating warp shell..." As if on cue, the _Hrunting_ shook--subspace suddenly found its presence in the conduit more unpalatable. "All right, move us up against the surface, Commander...stick to the maneuvering thrusters..."

"Aye, aye," Kreighen acknowledged. The rattling seemed to ease as the shuttle settled against the conduit. "I think it's working."

"We'll know in a minute," Tirava announced. "I've lost the _Exsecuturus_ \--a subspace shockwave is forming at its last known position.

Kreighen felt helpless for the next few minutes, as he watched the shockwave devour everything in its path. He tried to take satisfaction from having succeeded in his mission. Ledret was defeated; two quadrants had been spared a destructive war; and Ajax and Ijhel were safe, if only for the moment. He could die knowing he'd accomplished this much, but the serenity to accept his fate didn't give him the patience to wait for it to come to him. "Hurry the hell up," he muttered to the shockwave.

When it arrived, the wave flooded the matter stream of the conduit with subspace, destroying every manifold Ledret had built as though it were cardboard. And yet, for the most part, it seemed to wash past the _Hrunting_. As the current fluctuated, it buffeted the shuttle, threatening to dislodge it from its resting place. Jimenez pumped more and more fuel into the warp core, as if to send the vessel off at maximum warp, just to maintain the integrity of the warp shell. The end came in a blinding light, as the conduit ceased to exist around them.

When Kreighen opened his eyes, he was elated to find nothing in the window but a field of black, empty space, dotted with stars. "Excellent work, Ensign," he sighed.

Jimenez avoided the credit. "It was your plan, sir."

"Maybe. But I didn't really think it would work."

***

"Now see here," Ajax insisted. "I can't treat your condition until you comply with my instructions!"

"You're a fine one...t'talk about instructions," Ijhel coughed. When she heard the doors to the forward section hiss open she called out to her visitors. "Commander...Lieutenant...won't listen to me...order him to stand down!"

"She sounds normal to me," Tirava quipped.

"I'd like a second opinion," Kreighen replied. "Ajax?"

The hologram straightened to attention. "Sir, I've completed the initial scans. Unfortunately, when Starfleet developed the anti-assimilation treatments they neglected to test them on Cardassians. The anti-probes are fending off the worst of the Borg infection, but her histamines don't know that and they're overreacting. I think I can stabilize her--"

Kreighen raised his hand to cut him off. "Sergeant. What about you?"

He seemed surprised by the question. "Me? I'm...fine, Commander. I expect that whatever damage Ledret did to my matrix is temporarily being patched over by my medical subroutines." He looked off into the distance, philosophizing. "Yes...you might say I am akin to a soldier laying down his broken rifle to pick up a medical tricorder. There might be a paper in this...'Let Us Beat Swords Into Scalpels'...!"

"He's been...trying...to assault me, Commander!"

"I _beg your pardon_ , madam!" Ajax was outraged by the accusation and appealed to Kreighen. "Sir, standard medical procedure, from the Kahun Papyrus all the way to _Comparative Alien Physiology_ , requires that I remove the patient's clothing--"

Ijhel sat up in the biobed, weakly raising her hands in a pitiful effort to defend herself. "You-you'd _like_ that, wouldn't you!?"

"I'm a doctor, not a voyeur!" Ajax protested.

"You're a _soldier_ , not a doctor!" she shot back.

Kreighen put his hand to his forehead. "Computer, deactivate Ajax." When the hologram shimmered out of view, he looked to Tirava. "Get her into a bedsheet or something, then turn him back on."

"Th'nk...ahem...thank you, Commander," the Cardassian said, looking somewhat relieved. "For...everything, that is."

Kreighen looked back on his way out. "Starfleet or not, you're a member of this crew, Doctor. I had to bring you back."

"I know we haven't...seen eye to eye," she admitted. "I wo--I wouldn't have been missed."

"I told Ledret I served with the Cardassian relief mission a few years ago," he mentioned. "A lot of us had issues giving aid to the people we'd been fighting for forty years. But the Cardassians had a saying I liked--you've tossed it around once or twice. 'A true victory is to make your enemy see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place.'" He nodded to her and made his way to the cockpit. "Get well soon, Doctor."

Tirava crossed her arms once he had gone. "I have far less patience for you than Ajax _or_ Kreighen, so I suggest you cooperate."

"Of course, Lieutenant." Trying to move as little as possible, she began to pull herself out of her jumpsuit. "Wanted to thank you too...if you hadn't read my intentions..."--she paused to cough--"...we might all be dead."

"Deception is second nature to you," Tirava answered as she rummaged through storage for linens. "When you want it to be known, it's not hard to see."

"...More impressed with _your_ deception," Ijhel smiled. "You lie quite well...you'd make a good Cardassian..."

"How kind of you," she muttered. Tirava unceremoniously threw the sheet across Ijhel, as if making a bed. Reconsidering her hostility, she traced a finger along one of the scars on her face. "I...I know what's going on inside you. It goes harder than you let on. I suppose...you might make a...passable Andorian."

"High praise," Ijhel acknowledged. "But...just as well. Kreighen can...hardly deal with one Andorian woman."

"Hardly," Tirava repeated. "But he's learning."

***

When Kreighen returned to the cockpit, he found Jimenez still at ops, crunching the numbers from long-range sensor scans. "Do you have a fix on our position yet?" he asked.

"Still working on it, Commander," the ensign told him. "Usually you can start with some frame of reference--where you know you were, that sort of thing..."

"Tell me about it," the pilot agreed. Changing the subject, he added, "Ijhel's gonna be okay."

"Good," Jimenez answered. "That's...good."

"I just, uh, wanted to say I'm sorry...about your friend. If I could've saved her...any of them...I would have."

"I know, sir."

"I did what I had to do. Sometimes...what I have to do doesn't work out the way I'd like..."

"Yeah..." Jimenez closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "Yeah. I can relate."

"You sound like you need a drink, Ensign. I know I do." He walked up to the food station and ordered. "Bourbon. Dorton's Best. One bottle."

"Two glasses," Jimenez added.

Kreighen nodded. "Two glasses," he repeated for the computer. "By the way, I'm assuming you already scanned for Borg ships."

"As soon as we emerged in normal space," the ensign replied. Thinking about it caused him to glance back at his console, where he saw new data being displayed. "Wait...I've got our position..."

"Are we back in Borg space?"

Jimenez tensed as he read the details. "I...don't know, Commander. According to this, we're over two thousand light years from the transwarp aperture we started from! We don't have charts for this sector--even _Voyager_ never came through this region."

"Two thousand..." Kreighen repeated. "So that's....what, two years' travel at high warp just to get back?"

"That's not the half of it," Jimenez said, panic growing in his voice. "We exhausted a lot of fuel on that static warp shell. We don't _have_ two years' worth of deuterium! I'm not even sure we have enough to go find some more! I--"

"As you were, Ensign," Kreighen ordered. "One problem at a time. Problem number one is that we both need a drink."

"But you don't--!" Jimenez started to explain the magnitude of the crisis, but he saw he would only be proving Kreighen's point. "No argument there, Commander," he conceded.

"Call me 'Jake,'" Kreighen insisted as he filled the junior officer's glass.

"OK...Jake." Jimenez said it like he was trying on a new shoe. "So what's problem number two?"

"Trust me," the commander said as he sipped his bourbon, "we're making progress on that one."


End file.
